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CHRISTIAN  NURTURE 


By   nORACE   BTISHNELL 


"  And  all  thy  children  shall  be  taught  of  the  Lord  ;  and  great  shall  be 
the  peace  of  thy  children." 

Isaiah^  liv.  13. 


NEW   YORK: 
CHARLES   SCRIBNER,    124   GRAND    STREET, 

1861. 


Enteeed  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  tear  1860, 
By  CHARLES  SCRIBNER, 

In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  United  States  fob 
THE  Southern  District  of  New  York. 


R.  H.  H0BB3,  STEREOTTPER,  HARTFORD,  CONW. 


CONTENTS 


PART   I   —THE   DOCTRINE 

I. — What  Christian  nurture  is, 9 

II. — "What  Christian  nurture  is, 33 

III. — The  ostrich  nurture, 65 

IV. — The  organic  unity  of  the  family, 90 

Y. — Infant  baptism,  how  developed, 123 

YI. — Apostolic  authority  of  infant  baptism, 145 

YII. — Church  membership  of  children, 162 

YIII. — The  out-populating  power  of  the  Christian  stock, 195 


PART   II   —THE    MODE 

I. — "When  and  where  the  nurture  begins, 227 

II. — Parental  qualifications, 252 

III. — Physical  nurture,  to  be  a  means  of  grace, 271 

lY. — The  treatment  that  discourages  piety, 295 

Y. — Family  government, 314 

YI. — Plays  and  pastimes,  holidays  and  Sundays, 338 

YII. — The  Christian  teaching  of  children, 36G 

VIII.— Family  prayers, 385 


PREFACE 


The  subject  of  this  volume  is  one  of  the  highest,  in  the 
order  of  consequence,  both  as  respects  the  welfare  of  relig- 
ion and  of  human  society.  No  apology  therefore  is  needed, 
for  the  giving  to  the  public  of  any  thing  concerning  it,  which 
is  honestly  meant,  and  thoughtfully  prepared. 

I  should  have  preferred,  on  some  accounts,  to  write  a 
proper  treatise  on  the  subject — which  this  volume  is  not. 
The  shape  it  has  taken  will  be  sufficiently  explained,  by  the 
facts  and  considerations,  that  have  been  determining  causes, 
in  the  process  of  its  construction.  Thirteen  years  ago  I  was 
drawn,  by  solicitation  from  others,  into  the  publication  of  two 
discourses,  the  first  two  of  this  volume,  under  the  title 
Christian  Nurture.  Afterwards,  these  were  republished 
with  another,  the  fourth  of  the  present  volume,  and  with  other 
articles  variously  related,  under  the  same  title.  These  publi- 
cations have  been  out  of  print  for  some  years ;  for  I  have 
preferred  the  discontinuance  of  publication,  till  I  might  be 
able  to  present  the  subject  in  a  more  adequate  and  complete 
manner.     The  present  volume  is  th«  result. 

In  preparing  it,  I  could  not  easily  consent  to  lay  aside,  or 
pass  into  oblivion,  the  two  discourses  above  referred  to ;  for, 
under  the  fortune  that  befel  them,  they  had  become  a  little 
historical.  In  this  fuller  treatment  of  the  subject  therefore,  I 
have  allowed  them  to  stand,  requiring  the  additions  made,  to 


vi  PREFACE 

take  their  shape  or  type.  Thirteen  new  essays,  in  the  form 
of  discourses,  though  never  used  as  such,  but  written  simply 
for  the  discussion's  sake,  are  thus  added;  and  the  vohime, 
which  virtually  covers  the  ground  of  a  treatise,  takes  the  form 
of  successive  topical  discussions,  or  essays,  on  so  many  themes 
included  in  the  general  subject. 

As  was  natural,  in  this  kind  of  treatment,  I  have  not  been 
careful,  always,  to  remember  in  one  precisely  what  I  have 
said  in  another,  and  so  it  happens  that  they  sometimes  over- 
lap a  little ;  the  same  kind  of  liberty  being  taken  that  is  com- 
monly had  in  sermons,  where  there  is  no  delicacy  felt,  under 
any  particular  theme,  in  saying  what  may  be  necessary  to  the 
fullest  impression  of  it,  even  if  something  like  it  has  been 
necessary  to  the  impression  of  some  other.  But  this,  which, 
taking  the  volume  as  a  treatise,  might  be  a  just  subject  of 
criticism,  may  even  be  an  advantage,  as  respects  the  conven- 
ience of  use,  and  the  popular  and  practical  impressions  to  be 
made  by  it. 

I  need  offer  no  apology  for  retaining  the  old  title,  in  a  vol- 
ume that  is  virtually  new;  or  for  reasserting,  with  more 
emphasis  and  deliberation,  after  an  interval  of  years,  what  the 
years  have  only  established  and  made  firm  in  my  Christian 
convictions.  h.  b. 


PART  I  -THE  DOCTRINE 


I 


WHAT  CHRISTIAN  NURTURE  IS 

_  "Bring  them  up  in  the  nurture  and  admonition  of  the  Lord." — EpTie- 
sians^  vi.  4. 

There  is  then  some  kind  of  nurture  wliicli  is  of  the 
Lord,  deriving  a  quality  and  a  power  from  Him,  and 
communicatiDg  the  same.  Being  instituted  by  Him,  it 
will  of  necessity  have  a  method  and  a  character  peculiar 
to  itself,  or  rather  to  Him.  It  will  be  the  Lord's  way 
of  education,  having  aims  appropriate  to  Him,  and,  if 
realized  in  its  full  intent,  terminating  in  results  impos- 
sible to  be  reached  by  any  merely  human  method. 

What  then  is  the  true  idea  of  Christian  or. divine  nur- 
ture, as  distinguished  from  that  which  is  not  Christian  ? 
"What  is  its  aim?  What  its  method  of  working? 
What  its  powers  and  instruments  ?  What  its  contem- 
plated results  ?  Few  questions  have  greater  moment ; 
and  it  is  one  of  the  pleasant  signs  of  the  times,  that  the 
subject  involved  is  beginning  to  attract  new  interest, 
and  excite  a  spirit  of  inquiry  which  heretofore  has  not 
prevailed  in  our  churches. 

In  ordinary  cases,  the  better  and  more  instructive 
way  of  handling  this  subject,  would  be  to  go  directly 
into  the  practical  methods  of  parental  discipline,  and 
show  by  what  modes  of  government,  and  instruction  we 


10  WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS 

may  hope  to  realize  the  best  results.  But  unhappily 
the  public  mind  is  preoccupied  extensively  by  a  view 
of  the  whole  subject,  which  I  must  regard  as  a  theoret- 
ical mistake,  and  one  which  will  involve,  as  long  as  it 
continues,  practical  results  systematically  injurious. 
This  mistaken  view  it  is  necessary,  if  possible,  to 
remove.  And  accordingly  what  I  have  to  say  will 
take  the  form  of  an  argument  on  the  question  thus  put 
in  issue ;  though  I  design  to  gather  round  the  subj  ect,  as 
I  proceed,  as  much  of  practical  instruction  as  the  mode 
of  the  argument  will  suffer.  Assuming  then  the  ques- 
tion above  stated.  What  is  the  true  idea  of  Christian 
education? — I  answer  in  the  following  proposition, 
which  it  will  be  the  aim  of  my  argument  to  establish, 
viz : 

That  the  child  is  to  grow  up  a  Christian^  and  never 
hioiu  himself  as  being  otherwise. 

In  other  words,  the  aim,  effort,  and  expectation  should 
be,  not,  as  is  commonly  assumed,  that  the  child  is  to 
grow  up  in  sin,  to  be  converted  after  he  comes  to  a 
mature  age  ;  but  that  he  is  to  open  on  the  world  as  one 
that  is  spiritually  renewed,  not  remembering  the  time 
when  he  went  through  a  technical  experience,  but 
seeming  rather  to  have  loved  what  is  good  from  his 
earliest  years.  I  do  not  affi.rm  that  every  child  may,  in 
fact  and  without  exception,  be  so  trained  that  he  cer- 
tainly will  grow  up  a  Christian.  The  qualifications  it 
may  be  necessary  to  add  will  be  given  in  another  place, 
where  they  can  be  stated  more  intelligibly. 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE     IS  11 

This  doctrine  is  not  a  novelty,  now  rashly  and  for  tlie 
first  time  propounded,  as  some  of  you  may  be  tempted 
to  suppose.  I  shall  show  you,  before  I  have  done  with 
the  argument,  that  it  is  as  old  as  the  Christian  church, 
and  prevails  extensively  at  the  present  day  in  other 
parts  of  the  world.  Neither  let  your  own  experience 
raise  a  prej  udice  against  it.  If  you  have  endeavored  to 
realize  the  very  truth  I  here  afiirm,  but  find  that  your 
children  do  not  exhibit  the  character  you  have  looked 
for ;  if  they  seem  to  be  intractable  to  religious  influ- 
ences, and  sometimes  to  display  an  apparent  aversion  to 
the  very  subject  of  religion  itself,  you  are  not  of  course 
to  conclude  that  the  doctrine  I  here  m^aintain  is  untrue 
or  impracticable.  You  may  be  unreasonable  in  your 
expectations  of  your  children. 

Possibly,  there  may  be  seeds  of  holy  principle  in 
them,  which  you  do  not  discover.  A  child  acts  out 
his  present  feelings,  the  feelings  of  the  moment,  without 
qualification  or  disguise.  And  how,  many  times,  would 
all  you  appear,  if  you  were  to  do  the  same  ?  Will  you 
expect  of  them  to  be  better,  and  more  constant  and 
consistent,  than  yourselves ;  or  will  you  rather  expect 
them  to  be  children,  human  children  still,  living  a 
mixed  life,  trying  out  the  good  and  evil  of  the  world, 
and  preparing,  as  older  Christians  do,  when  they  have 
taken  a  lesson  of  sorrow  and  emptiness,  to  turn  again 
to  the  true  good  ? 

Perhaps  they  will  go  through  a  rough  mental  strug- 
gle, at  some  future  day,  and  seem,  to  others  and  to 
theinselves,  there  to  have  entered  on  a  Christian  life. 


12  WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS. 

And  yet  it  may  be  true  tliat  there  was  still  some  root 
of  right  principle  established  in  their  childhood,  which 
is  here  only  quickened  and  developed,  as  when  Chris- 
tians of  a  mature  age  are  revived  in  their  piety,  after  a 
period  of  spiritual,  lethargy ;  for  it  is  conceivable  that 
regenerate  character  may  exist,  long  before  it  is  fully 
and  formally  developed. 

But  suppose  there  is  really  no  trace  or  seed  of  holy 
principle  in  your  children,  has  there  been  no  fault  of 
piety  and  constancy  in  your  church  ?  no  want  of  Chris- 
tian sensibility  and  love  to  God  ?  no  carnal  spirit  visi- 
ble to  them  and  to  all,  and  imparting  its  noxious  and 
poisonous  quality  to  the  Christian  atmosphere  in  which 
they  have  had  their  nurture?  For  it  is  not  for  you 
alone  to  realize  all  that  is  included  in  the  idea  of  Chris- 
tian education.  It  belongs  to  the  church  of  Grod, 
according  to  the  degree  of  its  social  power  over  you 
and  in  you  and  around  your  children,  to  bear  a  part  of 
the  responsibility  with  you. 

Then,  again,  have  you  nothing  to  blame  in  your- 
selves? no  lack  of  faithfulness  ?  no  indiscretion  of  man- 
ner or  of  temper  ?  no  mistake  of  duty,  which,  with  a 
better  and  more  cultivated  piety,  you  would  have  been 
able  to  avoid?  Have  you  been  so  nearly  even  with 
your  privilege  and  duty,  that  you  can  find  no  relief  but 
to  lay  some  charge  upon  God,  or  comfort  yourselves  in 
the  conviction  that  he  has  appointed  the  failure  you  de- 
plore ?  When  God  marks  out  a  plan  of  education,  or 
sets  up  an  aim  to  direct  its  efforts,  you  will  see,  at  once, 
that  he  could  not  base  it  on  a  want  of  piety  in  you,  or 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS  13 

on  any  imperfections  that  flow  from  a  want  of  piety. 
It  must  be  a  plan  measured  by  Himself  and  the  fullness 
of  his  own  gracious  intentions. 

Besides,  you  must  not  assume  that  we,  in  this  age, 
are  the  best  Christians  that  have  ever  lived,  or  most 
likely  to  produce  all  the  fruits  of  piety.  An  assumption 
so  pleasing  to  our  vanity  is  more  easily  made  than  veri- 
fied, but  vanity  is  the  weakest  as  it  is  the  cheapest  of  all 
arguments.  "We  have  some  good  points,  in  which  we 
compare  favorably  with  other  Christians,  and  Christians 
of  other  times,  but  our  style  of  piety  is  sadly  deficient, 
in  many  respects,  and  that  to  such  a  degree  that  we  have 
little  cause  for  self-congratulation.  With  all  our  activ- 
ity and  boldness  of  movement,  there  is  a  certain  hard- 
ness and  rudeness,  a  want  of  sensibility  to  things  that 
do  not  lie  in  action,  which  can  not  be  too  much  de- 
plored, or  too  soon  rectified.  We  hold  a  piety  of  con- 
quest rather  than  of  love.  A  kind  of  public  piety,  that 
is  strenuous  and  fiery  on  great  occasions,  but  wants  the 
beauty  of  holiness,  wants  constancy,  singleness  of  aim, 
loveliness,  purity,  richness,  blamelessness,  and — if  I  may 
add  another  term  not  so  immediately  religious,  but  one 
that  carries,  by  association,  a  thousand  religious  quali- 
ties— wants  domesticity  of  characteF;  wants  them,  I 
mean,  not  as  compared  with  the  perfect  standard  of 
Christ,  but  as  compared  with  other  examples  of  piety 
that  have  been  given  in  former  times,  and  others  that 
are  given  now. 

For  some  reason,  we  do  not  make  a  Christian  atmos- 
phere about  us — do  not  produce  the  conviction  that  we 


14  ,\^yHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS. 

are  living  unto  God.  There  is  a  marvelous  want  of 
savor  in  our  piety.  It  is  a  flower  of  autumn,  colored 
as  highly  as  it  need  be  to  the  ej^e,  but  destitute  of  fra- 
grance. It  is  too  much  to  hope  that,  with  such  an  in- 
strument, we  can  fulfill  the  true  idea  of  Christian 
education.  Any  such  hope  were  even  presumptuous. 
At  the  same  time,  there  is  no  so  ready  way  of  removing 
the  deficiencies  just  described,  as  to  recall  our  churches 
to  their  duties  in  domestic  life;  those  humble,  daily, 
hourly  duties,  where  the  spirit  we  breathe  shall  be  a 
perpetual  element  of  power  and  love,  bathing  the  life 
of  childhood. 

Thus  much  it  was  necessary  to  say,  for  the  removal 
of  prejudices  that  are  likely  to  rise  up  in  your  minds, 
and  make  you  inaccessible  to  the  arguments  I  may 
offer.  Let  all  such  prejudices  be  removed,  or,  if  this  be 
too  much,  let  them,  at  least,  be  suspended  till  you  have 
heard  what  I  have  to  advance ;  for  it  can.  not  be  desired 
of  you  to  believe  any  thing  more  than  what  is  shown 
you  by  adequate  proofs.  AVhich  also  it  is  right  to  ask 
that  you  will  receive,  in  a  spirit  of  conviction,  such  as 
becomes  our  wretched  and  low  attainments,  and  with  a 
willingness  to  let  God  be  exalted,  though  at  the  expense 
of  some  abasemenl^n  ourselves.  In  pursuing  the  argu- 
ment, I  shall — 

I.  Collect  some  considerations  which  occur  to 
us,  viewing  the  subject  on  the  human  side,  and 
then — 

II.  Show  how  far  and  by  what  methods  God  has  jus- 
tified, on  his  part,  the  doctrine  we  maintain. 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS.  15 

There  is  then,  as  the  subject  appears  to  ns — 
1.  No  absurdity  in  supposing  that  children  are  to 
grow  up  in  Christ.  On  the  other  hand,  if  there  is  no 
absurditjr',  there  is  a  very  clear  moral  incongruity  in 
setting  up  a  contrary  supposition,  to  be  the  aim  of  a 
system  of  Christian  education.  There  could  not  be  a 
worse  or  more  baleful  implication  given  to  a  child,  than 
that  he  is  to  reject  God  and  all  holy  principle,  till  he 
has  come  to  a  mature  age.  What  authority  have  you 
from  the  Scriptures  to  tell  your  child,  or,  by  any  sign, 
to  show  him  that  you  do  not  expect  him  truly  to  love 
and  obey  Grod,  till  after  he  has  spent  whole  years  in 
hatred  and  wrong  ?  What  authority  to  make  him  feel 
that  he  is  the  most  unprivileged  of  all  human  beings, 
capable  of  sin,  but  incapable  of  repentance ;  old  enough 
to  resist  all  good,  but  too  young  to  receive  any  good 
whatever  ?  It  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  you  have 
some  express  authority  for  a  lesson  so  manifestly  cruel 
and  hurtful,  else  you  would  shudder  to  give  it.  I  ask 
you  for  the  chapter  and  verse,  out  of  which  it  is  derived. 
Meantime,  wherein  would  it  be  less  incongruous  for  you 
to  teach  your  child  that  he  is  to  lie  and  steal,  and  go 
the  whole  round  of  the  vices,  and  then,  after  he  comes 
to  mature  age,  reform  his  conduct  by  the  rules  of  virtue? 
Perhaps  you  do  not  give  your  child  to  expect  that  he 
is  to  grow  up  in  sin  ;  3^ou  only  expect  that  he  will  your- 
self That  is  scarcely  better:  for  that  which  is  your 
expectation,  will  assuredly  be  his ;  and  what  is  more, 
any  attempt  to  maintain  a  discipline  at  war  with  your 
own  secret  expectations,  will  only  make  a  hollow  and 


16  WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS. 

worthless  figment  of  tliat  wliicli  should  be  an  open, 
earnest  reality.  You  will  never  practically  aim  at  what 
you  practically  despair  of,  and  if  you  do  not  practically 
aim  to  unite  your  child  to  God,  you  will  aim  at  some- 
thing less  ;  that  is,  something  unchristian,  wrong,  sinful. 
But  my  child  is  a  sinner,  you  will  say  ;  and  how  can 
I  expect  him  to  begin  a  right  life,  until  God  gives  him 
a  new  heart  ?  This  is  the  common  way  of  speaking, 
and  I  state  the  objection  in  its  own  phraseology,  that  it 
may  recognize  itself.  Who  then  has  told  you  that  a 
child  can  not  have  the  new  heart  of  which  you  speak  ? 
Whence  do  you  learn  that  if  you  live  the  life  of  Christ, 
before  him  and  with  him,  the  law  of  the  Spirit  of  Life 
may  not  be  such  as  to  include  and  quicken  him  also  ? 
And  why  should  it  be  thought  incredible  that  there 
should  be  some  really  good  principle  awakened  in  the 
mind  of  a  child  ?  For  this  is  all  that  is  implied  in  a 
Christian  state.  The  Christian  is  one  who  has  simply 
begun  to  love  what  is  good  for  its  own  sake,  and  why 
should  it  be  thought  impossible  for  a  child  to  have  this 
love  begotten  in  him  ?  Take  any  scheme  of  depravity 
you  please,  there  is  yet  nothing  in  it  to  forbid  the  pos- 
sibility that  a  child  should  be  led,  in  his  first  moral  act, 
to  cleave  unto  what  is  good  and  right,  an}^  more  than  in 
the  first  of  his  twentieth  year.  He  is,  in  that  case,  only 
a  child  converted  to  good,  leading  a  mixed  life  as  all 
Christians  do.  The  good  in  him  goes  into  combat  with 
the  evil,  and  holds  a  qualified  sovereignty.  And  why 
may  not  this  internal  conflict  of  goodness  cover  the 
whole  life  from  its  dawn,  as  well  as  any  part  of  it? 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN     NURTURE    IS.  17 

And  wliat  more  appropriate  to  the  doctrine  of  spiritual 
influence  itself,  than  to  believe  that  as  the  Spirit  of  Je- 
hovah fills  all  the  worlds  of  matter,  and  holds  a  presence 
of  power  and  government  in  all  objects,  so  all  human 
souls,  the  infantile  as  well  as  the  adult,  have  a  nurture 
of  the  Spirit  appropriate  to  their  age  and  their  wants  ? 
What  opinion  is  more  essentiallyvmonstrous,  in  fact, 
than  that  which  regards  the  Holy  Spirit  as  having  no 
agency  in  the  immature  souls  of  children  who  are  grow- 
ing up,  helpless  and  unconscious,  into  the  perils  of 
time  ? 

2.  It  is  to  be  expected  that  Christian  education  will 
radically  differ  from  that  which  is  not  Christian.  Now, 
it  is  the  very  character  and  mark  of  all  unchristian  edu- 
cation, that  it  brings  up  the  child  for  future  conversion. 
No  effort  is  made,  save  to  form  a  habit  of  outward  vir- 
tue, and,  if  God  please  to  convert  the  family  to  some- 
thing higher  and  better,  after  they  come  to  the  age  of 
maturity,  it  is  well.  Is  then  Christian  education,  or  the 
nurture  of  the  Lord,  jio  way  different  from  this  ?  Or  is 
it  rather  to  be  supposed  that  it  will  have  a  higher  aim 
and  a  more  sacred  character  ? 

And,  since  it  is  the  distinction  of  Christian  parents, 
that  they  are  themselves  in  the  nurture  of  the  Lord,  since 
Christ  and  the  Divine  Love,  communicated  through 
him,  are  become  the  food  of  their  life,  what,  will  they  so 
naturally  seek  as  to  have  their  children  partakers  with 
them,  heirs  together  with  them,  in  the  grace  of  life  ?  I 
am  well  aware  of  the  common  impression  that  Christian 
education  is  sufficiently  distinguished  by  the  endeavor 

2'^ 


18  WHAT     CHRISTIAN     NURTURE    IS. 

of  Christian  parents  to  teach  their  children  the  lessons 
of  Scripture  histor}^,  and  the  doctrines  or  dogmas  of 
Scripture  theology.  But  if  they  are  given  to  under- 
stand, at  the  same  time,  that  these  lessons  can  be 
expected  to  produce  no  fruit  till  they  are  come  to  a  ma- 
ture age — that  they  are  to  grow  up  still  in  the  same 
character  as  other  children  do,  who  have  no  such  in- 
struction— what  is  this  but  to  enforce  the  practical 
rejection  of  all  the  lessons  taught  them?  And  which, 
in  truth,  is  better  for  them,  to  grow  up  in  sin  under 
Scripture  light,  with  a  heart  hardened  by  so  many  re- 
ligious lessons;  or  to  grow  up  in  sin,  unvexed  and 
unannoyed  by  the  wearisome  drill  of  lectures  that  only 
discourage  all  practical  benefit  ?  Which  is  better,  to  be 
piously  brought  up  in  sin,  or  to  be  allowed  quietly  to 
vegetate  in  it  ? 

These  are  questions  that  I  know  not  how  to  decide ; 
but  the  doubt  in  which  they  leave  us  will  at  least  suffice 
to  show  that  Christian  education  has,  in  this  view,  no 
such  eminent  advantages  over  that  which  is  unchristian, 
as  to  raise  any  broad  and  dignified  distinction  between 
them.  We  certainly  know  that  much  of  what  is  called 
Christian  nurture,  only  serves  to  make  the  subject  of 
religion  odious,  and  that,  as  nearly  as  we  can  discover, 
in  exact  proportion  to  the  amount  of  religious  teaching 
received.  And  no  small  share  of  the  difficulty  to  be 
overcome  afterwards,  in  the  struggle  of  conversion,  is 
created  in  just  this  way. 

On  the  other  hand,  you  will  hear,  for  example,  of 
cases  like  the  following :  A  young  man,  correctly  but 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS.  19 

not  religiously  brought  up,  light  and  gay  in  Lis  man- 
ners, and  thoughtless  hitherto  in  regard  to  any  thing  of 
a  serious  nature,  happens  accidentally  one  Sunday, 
while  his  friends  are  gone  to  ride,  to  take  down  a  book 
on  the  evidences  of  Christianity.  His  eye,  floating  over 
one  of  the  pages,  becomes  fixed,  and  he  is  surprised  to 
find  his  feelings  flowing  out  strangely  into  its  holy 
truths.  He  is  conscious  of  no  struggle  of  hostility,  but 
a  new  joy  dawns  in  his  being.  Henceforth,  to  the  end 
of  a  long  and  useful  life,  he  is  a  Christian  man.  The 
love  into  which  he  was  surprised  continues  to  flow,  and 
he  is  remarkable,  in  the  churches,  all  his  life  long,  as 
one  of  the  most  beautiful,  healthful,  and  dignified  ex- 
amples of  Christian  piety.  Now,  a  very  little  misedu- 
cation,  called  Christian,  discouraging  the  piety  it  teaches, 
and  making  enmity  itself  a  necessary  ingredient  in  the 
struggle  of  conversion,  conversion  no  reality  without  a 
struo^orle,  mio^ht  have  sufficed  to  close  the  mind  of  this 
man  against  every  thought  of  religion  to  the  end  of 
life. 

Such  facts  (for  the  case  above  given  is  a  fact  and  not 
a  fancy)  compel  us  to  suspect  the  value  of  much  that  is 
called  Christian  education.  They  suggest  the  possi- 
bility also  that  Christian  piety  should  begin  in  other 
and  milder  forms  of  exercise,  than  those  which  com- 
monly distinguish  the  conversion  of  adults ;  that  Christ 
himself,  by  that  renewing  Spirit  who  can  sanctify  from 
the  womb,  should  be  practically  infused  into  the  child- 
ish mind ;  in  other  words,  that  the  house,  having  a 
domestic  Spirit  of  grace  dwelling  in  it,  should  become 


20  WHAT     CHRISTIAN     NURTURE     IS 

tlie  church  of  childhood,  the  table  and  hearth  a  holy 
rite,  and  life  an  element  of  saving  power.  Something 
is  wanted  that  is  better  than  teaching,  something  that 
transcends  mere  effort  and  will- work — the  loveliness  of 
a  good  life,  the  repose  of  faith,  the  confidence  of  right- 
eous expectation,  the  sacred  and  cheerful  liberty  of  the 
Spirit — all  glowing  about  the  young  soul,  as  a  warm 
and  genial  nurture,  and  forming  in  it,  by  methods  that 
are  silent  and  imperceptible,  a  spirit  of  duty  and  relig- 
ious obedience  to  God.  This  only  is  Christian  nurture, 
the  nurture  of  the  Lord. 

8.  It  is  a  fact  that  all  Christian  parents  would  like  to 
see  their  children  grow  up  in  piety  ;  and  the  better 
Christians  they  are,  the  more  earnestly  they  desire  it ; 
and,  the  more  lovely  and  constant  the  Christian  spirit 
they  manifest,  the  more  likely  it  is,  in  general,  that  their 
children  will  early  display  the  Christian  character. 
This  is  current  opinion.  But  why  should  a  Christian 
parent,  the  deeper  his  piety  and  the  more  closely  he  is 
drawn  to  God,  be  led  to  desire,  the  more  earnestly, 
what,  in  God's  view,  is  even  absurd  or  impossible? 
And,  if  it  be  generally  seen  that  the  children  of  such 
are  more  likely  to  become  Christians  early,  what  forbids 
the  hope  that,  if  they  were  riper  still  in  their  piety,  living 
a  more  single  and  Christ-like  life,  and  more  cultivated 
in  their  views  of  family  nurture,  they  might  see  their 
children  grow  up  always  in  piety  towards  God  ?  Or,  if 
they  may  not  always  see  it  as  clearly  as  they  desire, 
might  they  not  still  be  able  to  implant  some  holy  prin- 
ciple, which  shall  be  the  seed  of  a  Christian  character 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    If".  21 

in  their  children,  though  not  developed  fully  and  visibly 
till  a  later  period  in  life  ? 

4.  Assuming  the  corruption  of  human  nature,  when 
should  we  think  it  wisest  to  undertake  or  expect  a  rem- 
edy ?  When  evil  is  young  and  pliant  to  good,  or  when 
it  is  confirmed  by  years  of  sinful  habit?  And  when,  in 
fact,  is  the  human  heart  found  to  be  so  ductile  to  the 
motives  of  religion,  as  in  the  simple,  ingenuous  age  of 
childhood  ?  How  easy  is  it  then,  as  compared  with  the 
stubbornness  of  adult  years,  to  make  all  wrong  seem 
odious,  all  good  lovely  and  desirable.  If  not  discour- 
aged by  some  ill-temper  which  bruises  all  the  gentle 
sensibilities,  or  repelled  by  some  technical  view  of  re- 
ligious character  which  puts  it  beyond  his  age,  how 
ready  is  the  child  to  be  taken  by  good,  as  it  were 
beforehand,  and  yield  his  ductile  nature  to  the  truth 
and  Spirit  of  God,  and  to  a  fixed  prejudice  against  all 
that  God  forbids. 

He  can  not  understand,  of  course,  in  the  earliest  stage 
of  childhood,  the  philosophy  of  religion  as  a  renovated 
experience,  and  that  is  not  the  form  of  the  first  lessons 
he  is  to  receive.  He  is  not  to  be  told  that  he  must 
have  a  new"  heart  and  exercise  faith  in  Christ's  atone- 
ment. "We  are  to  understand,  that  a  right  spirit  may 
be  virtually  exercised  in  children,  when,  as  yet,  it  is 
not  intellectually  received,  or  as  a  form  of  doctrine. 
Tlius,  if  they  are  put  upon  an  effort  to  be  good,  con- 
necting the  fact  that  God  desires  it  and  will  help  them 
in  the  endeavor,  that  is  all  which,  in  a  very  early  age, 
they  can  receive,  and  that  includes  every  thing — re- 


22  WHAT    CHRISTIAN"    NURTURE    IS. 

pentance,  love,  duty,  dependence,  faitli.  Nay,  the 
operative  truth  necessary  to  a  new  life,  may  possibly 
be  communicated  through  and  from  the  parent,  being 
revealed  in  his  looks,  manners,  and  ways  of  life,  before 
they  are  of  an  age  to  understand  the  teaching  of  words ; 
for  the  Christian  scheme,  the  gospel,  is  really  wrapped 
up  in  the  life  of  every  Christian  parent,  and  beams  out 
from  him  as  a  living  epistle,  before  it  escapes  from  the 
lips,  or  is  taught  in  words.  And  the  Spirit  of  truth 
may  as  well  make  this  living  truth  effectual,  as  the 
preaching  of  the  gospel  itself 

Never  is  it  too  early  for  good  to  be  communicated. 
Infancy  and  childhood  are  the  ages  most  pliant  to  good. 
And  who  can  think  it  necessary  that  the  plastic  nature 
of  childhood  must  first  be  hardened  into  stone,  and 
stiffened  into  enmity  towards  God  and  all  duty,  before 
it  can  become  a  candidate  for  Christian  character ! 
There  could  not  be  a  more  unnecessary  mistake,  and  it  is 
as  unnatural  and  pernicious,  I  fear,  as  it  is  unnecessary. 

There  are  many  who  assume  the  radical  goodness  of 
human  nature,  and  the  work  of  Christian  education  is, 
in  their  view,  only  to  educate  or  educe  the  good  that  is  in 
us.  Let  no  one  be  disturbed  by  the  suspicion  of  a  coinci- 
dence between  what  I  have  here  said  and  such  a  theory. 
The  natural  pravity  of  man  is  plainly  asserted  in  the 
Scriptures,  and,  if  it  were  not,  the  familiar  laws  of  phys- 
iology would  require  us  to  believe,  what  amounts  to  the 
same  thing.  And  if  neither  Scripture  nor  physiology 
taught  us  the  doctrine,  if  the  child  was  born  as  clear  of 
natural  prejudice  or  damage,  as  Adam  before  his  sin, 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS.  23 

spiritual  education,  or,  what  is  the  same,  probation,  that 
which  trains  a  being  for  a  stable,  intelligent  virtue  here- 
after, would  still  involve  an  experiment  of  evil,  there- 
fore a  fall  and  a  bondage  under  the  laws  of  evil ;  so 
that,  view  the  matter  as  we  will,  there  is  no  so  unrea- 
sonable assumption,  none  so  wide  of  all  just  philosophy, 
as  that  which  proposes  to  form  a  child  to  virtue,  by 
simply  educing  or  drawing  out  what  is  in  him. 

The  growth  of  Christian  virtue  is  no  vegetable  pro- 
cess, no  mere  onward  development.  It  involves  a 
struggle  with  evil,  a  fall  and  a  rescue.  The  soul  be- 
comes established  in  holy  virtue,  as  a  free  exercise,  only 
as  it  is  passed  round  the  corner  of  fall  and  redemption, 
ascending  thus  unto  God  through  a  double  experience, 
in  which  it  learns  the  bitterness  of  evil  and  the  worth 
of  good,  fighting  its  way  out  of  one,  and  achieving  the 
other  as  a  victory.  The  child,  therefore,  may  as  well 
begin  life  under  a  law  of  hereditary  damage,  as  to 
plunge  himself  into  evil  by  his  own  experiment,  which 
he  will  as  naturally  do  from  the  simple  impulse  of  curi- 
osity, or  the  instinct  of  knowledge,  as  from  any  noxious 
quality  in  his  mold  derived  by  descent.  For  it  is  not 
sin  which  he  derives  from  his  parents  ;  at  least,  not  sin 
in  any  sense  which  imports  blame,  but  only  some  preju- 
dice to  the  perfect  harmony  of  this  mold,  some  kind  of 
pravity  or  obliquity  which  inclines  him  to  evil.  These 
suggestions  are  offered,  not  as  necessary  to  be  received 
in  every  particular,  but  simply  to  show  that  the  scheme 
of  education  proposed,  is  not  to  be  identified  with 
another,  which  assumes  the  radical  goodness  of  human 


24  WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS. 

nature,  and  according  to  which,  if  it  be  true,  Christian 
education  is  insignificant. 

5.  It  is  implied  in  all  our  religious  philosophy,  that 
if  a  child  ever  does  any  thing  in  a  right  spirit;  ever 
loves  any  thing  because  it  is  good  and  right,  it  involves 
the  dawn  of  a  new  life.  This  we  can  not  deny  or  doubt, 
without  bringing  in  question  our  whole  scheme  of  doc- 
trine. Is  it  then  incredible  that  some  really  good  feeling 
should  be  called  into  exercise  in  a  child  ?  In  all  the 
discipline  of  the  house,  quickened  as  it  should  be  by 
the  Spirit  of  God,  is  it  true  that  he  can  never  once  be 
brought  to  submit  to  parental  authority  lovingly  and 
because  it  is  right  ?  Must  we  even  hold  the  absurdity 
of  the  scripture  council — "  Children  obey  your  parents 
in  the  Lord,  for  this  is  right  ?"  When  we  speak  thus 
of  a  love  for  what  is  right  and  good,  we  must  of  course 
discriminate  between  the  mere  excitement  of  a  natural 
sensibility  to  pleasure  in  the  contemplation  of  what  is 
good  (of  which  the  worst  minds  are  more  or  less  ca- 
pable,) and  a  practicable  subordination  of  the  soul  to  its 
power,  a  practicable  embrace  of  its  law.  The  child 
must  not  only  be  touched  with  some  gentle  emotions 
toward  what  is  right,  but  he  must  love  it  with  a  fixed 
love,  love  it  for  the  sake  of  its  principle,  receive  it  it  as 
a  vital  and  formative  power. 

Nor  is  there  any  age,  which  offers  itself  to  God's 
truth  and  love,  and  to  that  Quickening  Spirit  whence 
all  good  proceeds,  with  so  much  of  ductile  feeling  and 
susceptibilities  so  tender.  The  child  is  under  parental 
authority  too  for  the  very  purpose,  it  would  seem,  of  hav- 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE     IS  25 

ing  the  otherwise  abstract  principle  of  all  duty  imper- 
sonated in  his  parents,  and  thus  brought  home  to  his 
practical  embrace ;  so  that,  learning  to  obey  his  parents 
in  the  Lord,  because  it  is  right,  he  may  thus  receive, 
before  he  can  receive  it  intellectually,  the  principle  of 
all  piety  and  holy  obedience.  And  when  he  is  brought 
to  exercise  a  spirit  of  true  and  loving  submission  to  the 
good  law  of  his  parents,  what  will  you  see,  many  times, 
but  a  look  of  childish  joy,  and  a  happy  sweetness  of 
manner,  and  a  ready  delight  in  authority,  as  like  to  all 
the  demonstrations  of  Christian  experience,  as  any  thing 
childish  can  be  to  what  is  mature  ? 

6.  Children  have  been  so  trained  as  never  to  remem- 
ber the  time  when  they  began  to  be  religious.  Baxter 
was,  at  one  time,  greatly  troubled  concerning  himself, 
because  he  could  recollect  no  time  when  there  was  a 
gracious  change  in  his  character.  But  he  discovered, 
at  lengtK,  that  "education  is  as  properly  a  means 
of  grace  as  preaching,"  and  thus  found  the  sweeter 
comfort  in  *iis  love  to  God,  that  he  learned  to  love  him 
so  early.  The  European  churches,  generally,  regard 
Christian  piety  more  as  a  habit  of  life,  formed  under 
the  training  of  childhood,  and  less  as  a  marked  spiritual 
change  in  experience.  In  Germany,  for  example,  the 
church  includes  all  the  people,  and  it  is  remarkable 
that,  under  a  scheme  so  loose,  and  with  so  much  of  per- 
nicious error  taught  in  the  pulpit,  there  is  yet  so  much 
of  deep  religious  feeling,  so  much  of  lovely  and  simple 
character,  and  a  savor  of  Christian  piety  so  generally 
prevalent  in  the  community.     So  true  is  this,  that  the 


26  WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS 

German  people  are  every  day  spoken  of  as  a  people  re- 
ligious by  nature ;  no  other  way  being  observed  of  ac- 
counting for  the  strong  religious  bent  they  manifest. 
Whereas  it  is  due,  beyond  any  reasonable  question,  to 
the  fact  that  children  are  placed  under  a  form  of  treat- 
ment which  expects  them  to  be  religious,  and  are  not 
discouraged  by  the  demand  of  an  experience  above 
their  years. 

Again,  the  Moravian  Brethren,  it  is  agreed  by  all, 
give  as  ripe  and  graceful  an  exhibition  of  piety,  as  any 
body  of  Christians  living  on  the  earth,  and  it  is  the  rad- 
ical distinction  of  their  system  that  it  rests  its  power  on 
Christian  education.  They  make  their  churches  schools 
of  holy  nurture  to  childhood,  and  expect  their  children 
to  grow  up  there,  as  plants  in  the  house  of  the  Lord. 
Accordingly  it  is  affirmed  that  not  one  in  ten  of  the 
members  of  that  church,  recollects  any  time  when  he 
began  to  be  religious.  Is  it  then  incredible  that  what 
has  been  can  be?  Would  it  not  be  wiser  and  more 
modest,  when  facts  are  against  us,  to  admit  that  there  is 
certainly  some  bad  error,  either  in  our  life,  or  in  our 
doctrine,  or  in  both,  which  it  becomes  us  to  amend  ? 

Once  more,  if  we  narrowly  examine  the  relation  of 
parent  and  child,  we  shall  not  fail  to  discover  some- 
thing like  a  law  of  organic  connection,  as  regards  char- 
acter, subsisting  between  them.  Such  a  connection  as 
makes  it  easy  to  believe,  and  natural  to  expect,  that  the 
faith  of  the  one  will  be  propagated  in  the  other.  Per- 
haps I  should  rather  say,  such  a  connection  as  induces 
the  conviction  that  the  character  of  one  is  actually  in- 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE     TS.  27 

eluded  in  that  of  the  other,  as  a  seed  is  formed  in  the 
capsule ;  and  being  there  matured,  by  a  nutriment  de- 
rived from  the  stem,  is  gradually  separated  from  it.  It 
is  a  singular  fact,  that  many  believe  substantially  the 
same  thing,  in  regard  to  evil  character,  but  have  no 
thought  of  any  such  possibility  in  regard  to  good. 
There  has  been  much  speculation,  of  late,  as  to  whether 
a  child  is  born  in  depravity,  or  whether  the  depraved 
character  is  superinduced  afterwards.  But,  like  many 
other  great  questions,  it  determines  much  less  than  is 
commonly  supposed ;  for,  according  to  the  most  proper 
view  of  the  subject,  a  child  is  really  not  born  till  he 
emerges  from  the  infantile  state,  and  never  before  that 
time  can  he  be  said  to  receive  a  separate  and  properly 
individual  nature. 

The  declarations  of  Scripture,  and  the  laws  of  physiol- 
ogy, I  have  already  intimated,  compel  the  belief  that  a 
child's  nature  is  somehow  depravated  by  descent  from 
parents,  who  are  under  the  corrupting  effects  of  sin. 
But  this,  taken  as  a  question  relating  to  the  uiGre  punc- 
tum  temporis,  or  precise  point  of  birth,  is  not  a  question 
of  any  so  grave  import  as  is  generally  supposed ;  for 
the  child,  after  birth,  is  still  within  the  matrix  of  the 
parental  life,  and  will  be,  more  or  less,  for  many  years. 
And  the  parental  life  will  be  flowing  into  him  all  that 
time,  just  as  naturally,  and  by  a  law  as  truly  organic,  as 
when  the  sap  of  the  trunk  flows  into  a  limb.  We  must 
not  govern  our  thoughts,  in  such  a  matter,  by  our  eyes ; 
and  because  the  physical  separation  has  taken  place, 
conclude  that  no  organic  relation  remains.     Even  the 


28  WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS. 

physical  being  of  the  child  is  dependent  still  for  many 
months,  in  the  matter  of  nutrition,  on  organic  processes 
not  in  itself.  Meantime,  the  mental  being  and  charac- 
ter have  scarcely  begun  to  have  a  proper  individual 
life.  Will,  in  connection  with  conscience,  is  the  basis 
of  personality,  or  individuality,  and  these  exist  as  yet 
only  in  their  rudimental  type,  as  when  the  form  of  a 
seed  is  beginning  to  be  unfolded  at  the  root  of  a  flower. 
At  first,  the  child  is  held  as  a  mere  passive  lump  in 
the  arms,  and  he  opens  into  conscious  life  under  the  soul 
of  the  parent,  streaming  into  his  eyes  and  ears,  through 
the  manners  and  tones  of  the  nursery.  The  kind  and 
degree  of  passivity  are  gradually  changed  as  life  ad- 
vances. A  little  farther  on  it  is  observed  that  a  smile 
wakens  a  smile  ;  any  kind  of  sentiment  or  passion,  play- 
ing in  the  face  of  the  parent,  wakens  a  responsive  senti- 
ment or  passion.  Irritation  irritates,  a  frown  withers, 
love  expands  a  look  congenial  to  itself,  and  why  not 
holy  love  ?  Next  the  ear  is  opened  to  the  understand- 
ing of  words,  but  what  words  the  child  shall  hear,  he 
can  not  choose,  and  has  as  little  capacity  to  select  the 
sentiments  that  are  poured  into  his  soul.  Farther  on, 
the  parents  begin  to  govern  him  by  appeals  to  will,  ex- 
pressed in  commands,  and  whatever  their  requirement 
may  be,  he  can  as  little  withstand  it,  as  the  violet  can 
cool  the  scorching  sun,  or  the  tattered  leaf  can  tame  the 
hurricane.  Next  they  appoint  his  school,  choose  his 
books,  regulate  his  company,  decide  what  form  of  relig- 
ion, and  what  religious  opinions  he  shall  be  taught,  by 
takinpj  him  to  a  church  of  their  own  selection.     In  all 


what  chkistian  nukture  is  29 

this,  tliey  infringe  upon  no  right  of  the  child,  they  only 
fulfill  an  office  which  belongs  to  them.  Their  will  and 
character  are  designed  to  be  the  matrix  of  the  child's 
will  and  character.  Meantime,  he  approaches  more  and 
more  closely,  and  by  a  gradual  process,  to  the  proper 
rank  and  responsibility  of  an  individual  creature,  dur- 
ing all  which  process  of  separation,  he  is  having  their 
exercises  and  ways  translated  into  him.  Then,  at  last, 
he  comes  forth  to  act  his  part  in  such  color  of  evil,  and 
why  not  of  good,  as  he  has  derived  from  them. 

The  tendency  of  all  our  modern  speculations  is  to  an 
extreme  individualism,  and  we  carry  our  doctrines  of 
free  will  so  far  as  to  make  little  or  nothing  of  organic 
laws ;  not  observing  that  character  may  be,  to  a  great 
extent,  only  the  free  development  of  exercises  previ- 
ously wrought  in  us,  or  extended  to  ns,  when  other 
wills  had  us  within  their  sphere.  All  the  Baptist  theo- 
ries of  religion  are  based  in  this  error.  They  assume, 
as  a  first  truth,  that  no  such  thing  is  possible  as  an  or- 
ganic connection  of  character,  an  assumption  which  is 
plainly  refuted  by  what  we  see  with  our  eyes,  and,  as  I 
shall  by  and  by  show,  by  the  declarations  of  Scripture. 
We  have  much  to  say  also,  in  common  with  the  Bap- 
tists, about  the  beginning  of  moral  ageney,  and  we  seem 
to  fancy  that  there  is  some  definite  moment  when  a  child 
becomes  a  moral  agent,  passing  out  of  a  condition  where 
he  is  a  moral  nullity,  and  where  no  moral  agency 
touches  his  being.  Whereas  he  is  rather  to  be  regarded, 
at  the  first,  as  lying  within  the  moral  agency  of  the 
parent,  and  passing  out,  by  degrees,  through  a  course 


30  WHAT    CHEISTIAN    NURTURE    IS 

of  mixed  agency,  to  a  proper  independency  and  self- 
possession.  The  supposition  tliat  he  becomes,  at  some 
certain  moment,  a  complete  moral  agent,  which  a  mo- 
ment before  he  was  not,  is  clumsy,  and  has  no  agree- 
ment with  observation.  The  separation  is  gradual. 
He  is  never,  at  any  moment  after  birth,  to  be  regarded 
as  perfectly  beyond  the  sphere  of  good  and  bad  exer- 
cises ;  for  the  parent  exercises  himself  in  the  child,  play- 
ing his  emotions  and  sentiments,  and  working  a  charac- 
ter in  him,  by  virtue  of  an  organic  power. 

And  this  is  the  very  idea  of  Christian  education,  that 
it  begins  with  nurture  or  cultivation.  And  the  inten- 
tion is  that  the  Christian  life  and  spirit  of  the  parents, 
which  are  in  and  by  the  Spirit  of  Grod,  shall  flow  into 
the  mind  of  the  child,  to  blend  with  his  incipient  and 
half-formed  exercises ;  that  they  shall  thus  beget  their 
own  good  within  him — their  thoughts,  opinions,  faith, 
and  love,  which  are  to  become  a  little  more,  and  yet  a 
little  more,  his  own  separate  exercise,  but  still  the  same 
in  character.  The  contrary  assumption,  that  virtue 
must  be  the  product  of  separate  and  absolutely  inde- 
pendent choice,  is  pure  assumption.  As  regards  the 
measure  of  personal  merit  and  demerit,  it  is  doubtless 
true  that  every  subject  of  God  is  to  be  responsible  only 
for  what  is  his  own.  But  virtue  still  is  rather  a  state  of 
being  than  an  act  or  series  of  acts ;  and,  if  we  look  at 
the  causes  which  induce  or- prepare  such  a  state,  the  will 
of  the  person  himself  may  have  a  part  among  these 
causes  more  or  less  important,  and  it  works  no  absurdity 
to  suppose  that  one  may  be  even  prepared  to  such  a 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS  81 

state,  by  causes  prior  to  his  own  will ;  so  that,  when  he 
sets  off  to  act  for  himself,  his  struggle  and  duty  may  be 
rather  to  sustain  and  perfect  the  state  begun,  than  to 
produce  a  new  one.  Certain  it  is  that  we  are  never,  at 
any  age,  so  independent  as  to  be  wholly  out  of  the 
reach  of  organic  laws  which  affect  our  character. 

All  society  is  organic — the  church,  the  state,  the 
school,  the  family ;  and  there  is  a  spirit  in  each  of  these 
organisms,  peculiar  to  itself,  and  more  or  less  hostile, 
more  or  less  favorable  to  religious  character,  and  to  some 
extent,  at  least,  sovereign  over  the  individual  man.  A 
very  great  share  of  the  power  in  what  is  called  a  revi- 
val of  religion,  is  organic  power ;  nor  is  it  any  the  less 
divine  on  that  account.  The  child  is  only  more  within 
the  power  of  organic  laws  than  we  all  are.  We  possess 
only  a  mixed  individuality  all  our  life  long.  A  pure, 
separate,  individual  man,  living  wholly  within,  and  from 
himself,  is  a  mere  fiction.  Wo  such  person  ever  existed, 
or  ever  can.  I  need  not  say  that  this  view  of  an  or- 
ganic connection  of  character  subsisting  between  parent 
and  child,  lays  a  basis  for  notions  of  Christian  educa- 
tion, far  different  from  those  which  now  prevail,  un- 
der the  cover  of  a  merely  fictitious  and  mischievous 
individualism. 

Perhaps  it  may  be  necessary  to  add,  that,  in  the  strong 
language  I  have  used  concerning  the  organic  connection 
of  character  between  the  parent  and  the  child,  it  is  not 
designed  to  assert  a  power  in  the  parent  to  renew  the 
child,  or  that  the  child  can  be  renewed  by  any  agency 
of  the  Spirit  less  immediate,  than  that  which  renews  the 


82  WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS 

parent  himself.  When  a  germ  is  formed  on  the  stem 
of  any  plant,  the  formative  instinct  of  the  plant  may  be 
said  in  one  view  to  produce  it ;  but  the  same  solar  heat 
which  quickens  the  plant,  must  quicken  also  the  germ, 
and  sustain  the  internal  action  of  growth,  by  a  common 
presence  in  both.  So,  if  there  be  an  organic  power  of 
character  in  the  parent,  such  as  that  of  which  I  have 
spoken,  it  is  not  a  complete  power  in  itself,  but  only  such 
a  power  as  demands  the  realizing  presence  of  the  Spirit 
of  God,  both  in  the  parent  and  the  child,  to  give  it 
effect.  As  Paul  said,  "I  have  begotten  you  through 
the  gospel,"  so  may  we  say  of  the  parent,  who,  having 
a  living  gospel  enveloped  in  his  life,  brings  it  into  or- 
ganic connection  with  the  soul  of  childhood.  But  the 
declaration  excludes  the  necessity  of  a  divine  influence, 
not  more  in  one  case  than  in  the  other. 

Such  are  some  of  the  considerations  that  offer  them- 
selves, viewing  our  subject  on  the  human  side,  or  as  it 
appears  in  the  light  of  human  evidence — all  concurring 
to  produce  the  conviction,  that  it  is  the  only  true  idea 
of  Christian  education,  that  the  child  is  to  grow  up  in 
the  life  of  the  parent,  and  be  a  Christian  in  principle, 
from  his  earliest  years. 


II. 


WHAT  CHRISTIAN  NURTURE  IS. 

_  "Bring  them  up  in  the  nurture  and  admonition  of  the  Lord." — Ep7ie~ 
sians^  vi.  4. 

"We  proceed  now  to  inquire — 

II.  How  far  God,  in  the  revelation  made  of  his  cliar- 
acter  and  will,  favors  the  view  of  Christian  nurture 
vindicated,  in  a  former  discourse,  by  arguments  and 
evidences  of  an  inferior  nature  ?     And — 

1.  According  to  all  that  God  has  taught  us  concern- 
ing his  own  dispositions,  he  desires  on  his  part,  that 
children  should  grow  up  in  piety,  as  earnestly  as  the 
parent  can  desire  it ;  nay,  as  much  more  earnestly,  as 
he  hates  sin  more  intensely,  and  desires  good  with  less 
mixture  of  qualification.  Goodness,  or  the  production 
of  goodness,  is  the  supreme  end  of  God,  and  therefore, 
we  know,  on  first  principles,  that  he  desires  to  bestow 
whatsoever  spiritual  grace  is  necessary  to  the  moral 
renovation  of  childhood,  and  will  do  it,  unless  some 
collateral  reasons  in  his  plan,  involving  the  extension 
of  holy  virtue,  require  him  to  withhold. 

Thus,  if  nothing  were  hung  upon  parental  faithful- 
ness and  example,  if  the  child  were  not  used,  in  some 
degree  or  way,  as  an  argument,  to  hold  the  parent  to  a 
life  of  Christian  diligence,  then  the  good  principle  in 


34  WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS. 

the  parent  miglit  lack  the  necessary  stimulus  to  bring  it 
to  maturity.  Or,  if  all  children  alike,  in  spite  of  the 
evil  and  unchristian  example  of  the  house,  were  to 
be  started  into  life  as  spiritually  renewed,  one  of  the 
strongest  motives  to  holy  living  would  be  taken  away 
from  parents,  in  the  fact  that  their  children  are  safe 
as  regards  a  good  beginning,  without  any  carefulness 
in  them,  or  prayerfulness  in  their  life ;  and  their  own 
virtue  might  so  overgrow  itself  with  weeds,  as  never  to 
attain  to  a  sound  maturity.  Let  it  be  enough  to  know, 
on  first  principles  in  the  character  of  God,  that  he  will 
so  dispense  his  spiritual  agency  to  you  and  to  your 
children,  as  to  produce,  considering  the  freedom  of  you 
both,  the  best  measure  and  the  ripest  state  of  holy  vir- 
tue. And  how  far  short  is  this  of  the  conclusion,  that 
if  you  live  as  you  ought  and  may  yourselves,  God  will 
so  dispense  his  Spirit  that  you  may  see  your  children 
grow  up  in  piety? 

Observe,  too,  that  he  expressly  pledges  his  Holy  Spirit 
to  you,  as  one  of  his  first  gifts,  and,  what  is  more,  even 
commands  you  to  be  filled  with  the  Spirit ;  and  consid- 
ering the  organic  relation  that  subsists,  by  his  own  ap- 
pointment, between  you  and  your  children,  how  far  off 
is  he,  in  this,  from  pledging  you  a  mercy  that  accrues 
to  their  benefit  ?  He  appoints  you  also  to  be  a  light  to 
the  world,  and,  by  the  grace  he  pours  into  your  being, 
prepares  you  to  be  ;  how  much  more  a  light  to  minds 
that  are  fed  by  simple  nurture  from  your  own  ?  And 
when  you  consider  how  fond  he  is,  if  I  may  so  speak, 
in  the  blessings  he  pours  on  the  good,  of  gathering  their 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS.  85 

children  with  them  in  the  same  circle  of  favor,  how 
many  of  his  promises,  in  all  ages,  run — "to  you  and  to 
your  children,"  what  better  assurance  can  you  reason- 
ably ask,  to  fortify  your  confidence  in  whatever  spirit- 
ual grace  may  be  necsssary  to  your  utmost  success  ? 

2.  If  there  be  any  such  thing  as  Christian  nurture, 
distinguished  from  that  which  is  not  Christian,  which  is 
generally  admitted,  and,  by  the  Scriptures  clearly  as- 
serted, then  is  it  some  kind  of  nurture  which  God  ap- 
points. Does  it  then  accord  with  the  known  character 
of  God,  to  appoint  a  scheme  of  education,  the  only 
proper  result  of  which  shall  be  that  children  are  trained 
up  under  it  in  sin  ?  It  would  not  be  more  absurd  to 
suppose  that  God  has  appointed  church  education,  to 
produce  a  first  crop  of  sin,  and  then  a  crop  of  holiness. 
God  appoints  nothing  of  which  sin,  and  only  sin,  is  to 
be  the  proper  and  legitimate  result,  whether  for  a  longer 
or  a  shorter  time  ;  least  of  all,  a  mode  of  training  which 
is  to  produce  sin.  Holy  virtue  is  the  aim  of  every  plan 
God  adopts,  every  means  he  prescribes,  and  we  have  no 
right  to  look  only  for  sin,  in  that  which  he  has  ap- 
pointed as  a  means  of  virtue.  A¥e  can  not  do  it  under- 
standingly  without  great  impiety. 

3.  God  does  expressly  lay  it  upon  us  to  expect  that 
our  children  will  grow  up  in  piety,  under  the  parental 
nurture,  and  assumes  the  possibility  that  such  a  result 
may  ordinarily  be  realized.  "  Train  up  a  child  " — how  ? 
for  future  conversion  ? — No,  "  but  in  the  way  he  should 
go,  that  when  he  is  old  he  may  not  depart  from  it."  If 
it  be  said  that  this  relates  only  to  outward  habits  of  vir- 


36  WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE     IS. 

tue  and  vice,  not  to  spiritual  life,  the  Old  Testament,  I 
reply,  does  not  raise  that  distinction,  as  it  is  raised  in 
the  New.  It  puts  all  good  together,  all  evil  together, 
and  regards  a  child  trained  up  in  the  way  he  should  go, 
as  going  in  all  the  ways,  and  fulfilling  all  the  ideas  of 
virtue.  The  phraseology  of  the  N"ew  Testament  carries 
the  same  import.  "  Bring  them  up  in  the  nurture  and 
admonition  of  the  Lord,"  a  form  of  expression,  which 
indicates  the  existence  of  a  Divine  nurture,  that  is  to 
encompass  the  child  and  mold  him  unto  God ;  so  that 
he  shall  be  brought  up,  as  it  were,  in  Him. 

4.  A  time  is  foretold,  as  our  chnrches  generally  be- 
lieve, when  all  shall  know  God,  even  from  the  least  to 
the  greatest ;  that  is,  shall  spiritually  know  him,  or  so 
that  there  shall  be  no  need  of  exhorting  one  another  to 
know  him  ;  for  intellectual  knowledge  is  not  carried  by 
exhortation.  If  such  a  time  is  ever  to  come,  then,  at 
least,  children  are  to  grow  up  in  Christ.  Can  it  come 
too  soon  ?  And,  if  we  have  the  opinion  that  any  such 
thing  is  impossible,  either  we,  or  those  who  come  after 
Tis,  must  get  rid  of  it.  A  principal  reason  why  the 
great  expectations  of  the  future,  that  we,  in  this  age, 
are  giving  out  so  confidently,  seem  only  visionary  and 
idle  dreams  to  many,  is  that  we  are  perpetually  assum- 
ing their  impossibility  ourselves.  Our  very  theory  of 
religion  is,  that  men  are  to  grow  up  in  evil,  and  be 
dragged  into  the  church  of  God  by  conquest.  The 
world  is  to  lie  in  halves,  and  the  kingdom  of  God  is  to 
stretch  itself  side  by  side  with  the  kingdom  of  darkness, 
making  sallies  into  it,  and  taking  captive  those  who  are 


"WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS.  37 

sufficiently  hardened  and  bronzed  in  guiltiness  to  be 
converted  1 

Thus  we  assume  even  the  absurdity  of  all  our  expect- 
ations in  regard  to  the  possible  advancement  of  human 
society  and  the  universal  prevalence  of  Christian  virtue. 
And  thus  we  throw  an  air  of  extravagance  and  unrea- 
son over  all  we  do.  Whereas  there  is  a  sober  and 
rational  possibility,  that  human  society  should  be  "uni- 
versally pervaded  by  Christian  virtue.  The  Christian 
scheme  has  a  scope  of  intention,  and  instruments  and 
powers  adequate  to  this :  it  descends  upon  the  world  to 
claim  all  souls  for  its  dominion — all  men  of  all  climes, 
all  ages  from  childhood  to  the  grave.  It  is,  indeed,  a 
plan  which  supposes  the  existence  of  sin,  and  sin  will 
be  in  the  world,  and  in  all  hearts  in  it,  as  long  as  the 
world  or  human  society  continues  ;  but  the  scheme  has 
a  breadth  of  conception,  and  has  powers  and  provisions 
embodied  in  it,  which,  apart  from  all  promises  and  pre^ 
dictions,  certify  us  of  a  day  when  it  will  reign  in  all 
human  hearts,  and  all  that  live  shall  live  in  Christ.  Let 
us  either  renounce  any  such  confidence,  or  show,  by  a 
thorough  consistency  in  our  religious  doctrines,  that  we 
hold  it  deliberately  and  manfully. 

5.  We  discover  in  the  Scriptures  that  the  organic 
law,  of  which  I  have  spoken,  is  distinctly  recognized, 
and  that  character  in  children  is  often  regarded  as,  in 
some  very  important  sense,  derivative  from  their  parents. 
It  is  thus  that  "  sin  has  passed  upon  all  men."  "  By 
the  offense  of  one,  judgment  came  upon  all."  Christian 
faith  is  also  spoken  of  in  a  similar  way — "  The  un- 


38  WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS. 

feigned  faith,  whicli  dwelt  first,  in  thy  grandmother  Lois, 
and  thy  mother  Eunice,  and,  I  am  persuaded,  that  in 
thee  also."  Not  that,  in  the  bald  and  naked  sense,  it 
had  descended  thus  through  three  generations.  But 
the  apostle  conceives  a  power,  in  the  good  life  of  these 
mothers,  that  must  needs  transmit  some  flavor  of  piety. 
In  like  manner,  God  is  represented  as  "  keeping  cove- 
nant and  mercy  with  them  that  love  him  and  keep  his 
commandments,  to  a  thousand  generations  ;"  which,  if  it 
signifies  any  thing,  amounts  to  a  declaration  that  he  will 
spiritually  own  and  bless  every  succeeding  generation, 
to  the  end  of  the  world,  if  only  the  preceding  will  live 
so  as  to  be  fit  vehicles  of  his  blessing ;  for  it  is  not  any 
covenant,  as  a  form  of  mutual  contract,  which  carries 
the  divine  favor,  but  it  is  the  loving  Him  rather,  and 
keeping  His  commandments,  by  an  upright,  godly  life, 
which  sets  the  parents  on  terms  of  friendship  with  God, 
and  secures  the  inhabitation  of  his  power. 

Declarations  like  those  in  the  eighteenth  chapter  of 
Ezekiel,  ''  the  son  shall  not  bear  the  iniquity  of  the 
father," — "the  soul  that  sinneth,  it  shall  die," — are 
hastily  applied  by  many,  not  to  show  that  the  child  is 
to  be  punished  only  for  his  own  sin,  which  is  their  true 
import,  but,  as  if  it  were  the  same  thing,  to  disprove  the 
fact  of  an  organic  connection,  by  which  children  receive 
a  character  from  their  parents.  Whereas  this  latter  is 
a  truth  which  we  see  with  our  eyes,  and  one  that  is  con- 
stantly af&rmed  in  the  Scriptures,  both  in  respect  to  bad 
character  and  to  good.  "  God  layeth  up  the  iniquity  of 
the  wicked  for  his  children," — "Visiting  the  iniquities 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS.  89 

of  the  fathers  upon  the  children  to  the  third  and  fourth 
generation."  By  which  we  are  to  understand,  what  is 
every  day  exhibited  in  actual  historic  proof,  that  the 
wickedness  of  parents  propagates  itself  in  the  character 
and  condition  of  their  children,  and  that  it  ordinarily 
requires  three  or  four  generations  to  ripen  the  sad  har- 
vest of  misery  and  debasement.  Again,  on  the  other 
side,  "  he  hath  blessed  thy  children  with  thee," — "  For 
the  good  of  them  and  their  children  after  them," — "  For 
the  promise  is  to  you  and  to  your  children."  The  Scrip- 
tures have  a  perpetual  habit,  if  I  may  so  speak,  of  asso- 
ciating children  with  the  character  and  destiny  of  their 
parents.  In  this  respect,  they  maintain  a  marked  con- 
trast with  the  extreme  individualism  of  our  modern 
philosophy.  They  do  not  always  regard  the  individual 
as  an  isolated  unit,  but  they  often  look  upon  men  as 
they  exist,  in  families  and  races,  and  under  organic 
laws. 

Something  has  undoubtedly  been  gained  to  modern 
theology,  as  a  human  science,  by  fixing  the  attention 
strongly  upon  the  individual  man,  as  a  moral  agent,  im- 
mediately related  to  God,  and  responsible  only  for  his 
own  actions ;  at  the  same  time  there  was  a  truth,  an 
important  truth,  underlying  the  old  doctrine  of  federal 
headship  and  original  or  imputed  sin,  though  strangely 
misconceived,  which  we  seem,  in  our  one-sided  specula- 
tions, to  have  quite  lost  sight  of.  And  how  can  we 
ever  attain  to  any  right  conception  of  organic  duties, 
until  we  discover  the  reality  of  organic  powers  and  rela- 
tions ?     And  how  can  we  hope  to  set  ourselves  in  har- 


40  WHAT    CHKISTIAN    NURTURE    IS 

mony  with  the  Scriptures,  in  regard  to  family  nurture, 
or  household  baptism,  or  any  other  kindred  subject, 
while  our  theories  include,  or  overlook  precisely  that, 
which  is  the  base  of  their  teachings,  and  appointments  ? 
This  brings  me  to  my — ■ 

Last  argument,  which  is  drawn  from  infant  or  house- 
hold baptism — a  rite  which  supposes  the  fact  of  an  or- 
ganic connection  of  character  between  the  parent  and 
the  child  ;  a  seal  of  faith  in  the  parent,  applied  over  to 
the  child,  on  the  ground  of  a  presumption  that  his  faith 
is  wrapped  up  in  the  parent's  faith ;  so  that  he  is  ac- 
counted a  believer  from  the  beginning.  We  must  dis- 
tinguish here  between  a  fact  and  a  presumption  of  fact. 
If  you  look  upon  a  seed  of  wheat,  it  contains,  in  itself, 
presumptively,  a  thousand  generations  of  wheat,  though 
by  reason  of  some  fault  in  the  cultivation,  or  some  speck 
of  diseased  matter  in  itself,  it  may,  in  fact,  never  repro- 
duce at  all.  So  the  Christian  parent  has,  in  his  charac- 
ter, a  germ,  which  has  power,  presumptively,  to  produce 
its  like  in  his  children,  though  by  reason  of  some  bad 
fault  in  itself,  or  possibly  some  outward  hindrance  in 
the  Church,  or  some  providence  of  death,  it  may  fail  to 
do  so.  Thus  it  is  that  infant  baptism  becomes  an  ap- 
propriate rite.  It  sees  the  child  in  the  parent,  counts 
him  presumptively  a  believer  and  a  Christian,  and,  with 
the  parent,  baptizes  him  also.  Furthermore,  you  will 
perceive  that  it  must  be  presumed,  either  that  the  child 
will  grow  up  a  believer,  or  that  he  will  not.  The  Bap-, 
tist  presumes  that  he  will  not,  and  therefore  declares  the 
right  to  be  inappropriate.     God  presumes  that  he  will. 


WHAT    CHEISTIAN    NURTURE    IS.  41 

and  therefore  appoints  it.  The  Baptist  tells  the  child 
that  nothing  but  sin  can  be  expected  of  him ;  God  tells 
him  that  for  his  parents'  sakes,  whose  faith  he  is  to  fol- 
low, he  has  written  his  own  name  upon  him,  and  ex- 
pects him  to  grow  up  in  all  duty  and  piety. 

I  have  no  desire  to  press  the  passages  in  which  men- 
tion is  made  of  household  baptism  beyond  their  true 
import.  When  Paul  is  said  to  have  "baptized  the 
household  of  Stephanas,"  our  Baptist  friends  reply  that 
the  text  proves  nothing,  in  respect  to  infant  baptism, 
because  it  can  not  be  shown  that  there  were  any  chil- 
dren in  the  household ;  and  some,  who  practice  infant 
baptism,  have  conceded  the  sufficiency  of  the  objection. 
But  the  power  of  this  proof- text  does  not  depend,  in 
the  least,  on  the  fact  that  there  were  children  in  the 
household  of  Stephanas,  but  simply  on  the  form  of  the 
language.  Indeed,  it  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  the 
argument  for  infant  baptism  is  rather  strengthened  than 
weakened,  by  the  supposition  that  there  were,  in  fact, 
no  infants  or  children  in  this  household ;  for  a  house- 
hold generally  contains  children,  and  a  term  so  inclu- 
sive in  its  import,  could  never  come  into  use,  unless  it 
was  the  practice  for  baptism  to  go  by  households. 
Under  a  practice  like  that  of  our  Baptist  brethren,  what 
preacher  would  ever  be  heard  to  speak,  in  this  general 
inclusive  way,  of  having  baptized  a  household  ?  In 
the  case  of  the  jailor,  too,  the  same  reasoning  holds. 
Here,  however,  our  Baptist  brethren  go  farther,  endeav- 
oring to  show  positively,  from  the  language  used,  that 
there  were  no  infants  or  children  in  the  household :  for 


4:2  WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS. 

when  it  is  said  tliat  tlie  jailor  "rejoiced,  believing  in 
God  with  all  his  house,"  it  is  argued  that,  inasmuch  as 
infant  children  are  incapable  of  believing,  there  could 
have  been  no  infants  in  the  family.  Admitting  the  cor- 
rectness of  the  translation,  which  some  have  questioned, 
the  argument  seems  rather  plausible  as  a  turn  of  logic, 
than  just  and  convincing  ;  for,  if  we  consider  the  more 
decisive  position  held  in  that  age  by  the  heads  of  fami- 
lies, and  how,  in  common  speech,  they  were  supposed 
to  carry  the  religion  of  the  family  with  them,  we  shall 
be  convinced  that  nothing  was  more  natural  than  the 
very  language  here  used.  It  was  taken  for  granted,  as 
a  matter  of  common  understanding,  that,  in  a  change 
of  religion,  the  children  went  with  the  parents  :  if  they 
became  Jews,  that  their  children  would  be  Jews ;  if 
Christian  believers,  that  their  children  would  be  Chris 
tians.  Hence  all  the  terms  used,  in  reference  to  their 
religion,  took  the  most  inclusive  form.  If  one  believed 
in  God,  he  believed  with  all  his  house  :  the  change  he 
suffered,  in  the  common  understanding  of  the  age,  car- 
ried the  house  with  him ;  and  it  occurred  to  no  one  to 
question  the  literal  exactness  of  such  like  inclusive  terms. 
It  has  been  a  fashion,  with  many  modern  critics,  to 
surrender  both  these  passages  as  proofs  of  infant  bap- 
tism, and  they  certainly  do  not  prove  it,  in  just  the  way 
in  which  many  have  used  them  as  proof- texts.  But  if 
any  one  will  seek  a  point  of  view,  whence  he  may  be 
able  to  give  a  natural  and  easy  interpretation  to  the  lan- 
guage used,  or  if  he  will  ask,  on  the  simple  doctrine  of 
chances,  what  chance  there  was  that  these  two  house- 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN"    NURTURE    IS  43 

holds  should  include  no  children,  and  moreover  what 
chance  that,  in  the  only  two  cases  of  household  baptism 
mentioned  in  the  Scripture,  the  households  should  have 
been  distinguished  by  this  singularity,  he  will  be  as 
little  likely  as  possible,  to  concede  the  fact  that  infant 
baptism  is  not  adequately  proved  by  these  passages. 

But  the  true  idea  of  these  passages,  and  also  of  the 
rite  itself,  is  seen  most  evidently  in  the  history  of  its 
establishment  by  Christ,  in  the  third  chapter  of  John. 
The  Jewish  nation  regarded  other  nations  as  unclean. 
Hence,  when  a  Gentile  family  wished  to  become  Jewish 
citizens,  they  were  baptized  in  token  of  cleansing.  Then 
they  were  said  to  be  re-born,  or  regenerated,  so  as  to  be 
accounted  true  descendants  of  Abraham.  We  use  the 
term  naturalize^  that  is,  to  make  natural  born,  in  the  same 
sense.  But  Christ  had  come  to  set  up  a  spiritual  king- 
dom, the  kingdom  of  heaven ;  and  finding  all  men  aliens, 
and  spiritually  unclean,  he  applies  over  the  rite  of  bap- 
tism, which  was  familiar  to  the  Jews,  ("  art  thou  a  Mas- 
ter in  Israel,  and  knowest  not  these  things  ?  ")  giving  it 
a  higher  sense.  "  Except  a  man  be  born  of  water  and 
of  the  Spirit,  he  can  not  enter  the  kingdom  of  heaven." 
But  the  Gentile  proselyte,  according  to  the  custom  here 
described — here  is  the  point  of  the  argument — came 
with  his  family.  They  were  all  baptized  together, 
young  and  old,  all  regenerated  or  naturalized  together ; 
and  therefore,  in  the  new  application  made  of  the  rite 
to  signify  spiritual  cleansing  and  regeneration,  it  is  un- 
derstood, of  course,  that  children  are  to  come  with  their 
parents.     To  have  excluded  them  would  have  been,  to 


44:  WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS. 

every  Jewish  mind,  tlie  higlit  of  absurdity.  They 
could  not  have  been  excluded^  without  express  excep- 
tion, and  no  exception  was  made. 

Some  have  questioned  whether  proselyte  baptism 
existed  at  this  early  age  ;  but  of  this  the  third  chapter 
of  John  is  itself  conclusive  proof;  for  how  else  was 
baptism  familiarly  known  to  the  Jews  as  connected  with- 
regeneration;  that  is,  civil  regeneration?  There  is 
always  a  historic  reason  for  religious  rites  and  for  usages 
of  language ;  and  you  will  find  it  impossible  to  suppose 
that  Christ  appointed  baptism,  and  set  the  rite  in  con- 
nection with  spiritual  regeneration,  by  any  mere  acci- 
dent, or  without  some  historic  basis,  answering  to  that 
which  I  have  just  described.  In  "this  manner,  all  his 
language,  in  the  interview  with  Xicodemus,  becomes 
natural  and  easy. 

It  follows  that  the  children  of  Christian  disciples, 
being  baptized  with  their  parents,  as  the  children  of 
Grentile  proselytes  were  baptized  with  theirs,  would  be 
taken  or  presumed  by  the  church  to  be  spiritually 
cleansed,  in  the  same  manner.  Accordingly,  just  as  the 
children  of  Jews  were  accounted  Jews,  and  not  as  un- 
clean, when  one  of  the  parents  was  a  Jew,  so  Paul  tells 
us,  that  in  the  church  of  God,  the  believing  party  sanc- 
tifies the  unbelieving,  "  else  were  your  children  unclean, 
but  now  are  they  holy  ; "  showing  that  the  Jewish  analo- 
gies, in  regard  to  children,  were  in  fact  translated,  or 
passed  over  to  the  church,  and  adopted  there — a  trans- 
lation that  naturally  followed,  from  the  reapplication 
of  proselyte  baptism. 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS  45 

Then  passing  into  the  early  history  of  the  church,  we 
hear  Justin  Martyr  saying:  "There  are  some  of  us, 
eighty  years  old,  who  were  made  disciples  to  Christ  in 
their  childhood  ;"  that  is,  in  the  age  of  the  apostles,  and 
while  they  were  yet  living ;  for  it  was  now  less  than 
eighty  years  since  their  death.  And  in  the  expression 
'''■made  disciples ^^^  taken  in  connection  with  the  baptis- 
mal formula,  "  Go  disciple  all  nations,  baptizing,"  &c., 
we  see  that  he  alludes  to  baptism  ;  for  baptism  was  the 
rite  that  introduced  the  subject  into  the  Christian  school 
as  a  disciple  ;  and  what  so  natural  as  that  the  children 
of  disciples  should  be  disciples  with  them  ? 

Then  again,  Ireneus,  who  lived  within  one  generation 
of  the  apostles,  gives  us  the  second  mention  of  this  rite 
which  appears  in  history,  when  he  says:  " Christ  came 
to  save  all  persons  through  himself;  all,  I  say,  who 
through  him  are  regenerated  unto  God :  infants  and 
little  ones,  and  children  and  youth,  and  the  aged." 
Which  phrase,  "  regenerated  unto  God,^^  applied  to  parents 
and  little  ones,  alludes  to  baptism  :  showing  that  a  no- 
tion of  baptism,  as  connected  with  regeneration,  coinci- 
dent with  that  which  we  found  in  the  third  chapter  of 
John,  was  then  current  in  the  church. 

I  have  been  thus  full  upon  the  rite  of  baptism,  not 
because  that  is  my  subject,  but  because  the  rite  involves, 
in  all  its  grounds  and  reasons,  the  same  view  of  Chris- 
tion  education  which  I  am  seeking  to  establish.  One 
can  not  be  thoroughly  understood  and  received  without 
the  other.  And  it  is  precisely  on  this  account  that  we 
have  so  great  difficulty  in  sustaining  the  rite  of  infant 


46  WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS 

baptism.  It  oiiglit  to  be  difficult  to  sustain  any  rite, 
after  the  sense  of  it  is  wholly  gone  from  us.  You  per- 
ceive, too,  in  this  exposition,  that  the  view  of  Christian 
nurture  I  am  endeavoring  to  vindicate,  is  not  new,  but 
is  older,  by  far,  than  the  one  now  prevalent — as  old  as 
the  Christian  church.  It  is  radically  one  with  the  an- 
cient doctrine  of  baptism  and  regeneration,  advanced 
by  Christ,  and  accepted  by  the  first  fathers. 

We  have  much  to  say  of  baptismal  regeneration  as  a 
great  error,  which  undoubtedly  it  is,  in  the  form  in 
which  it  is  held ;  but  it  is  only  a  less  hurtful  error  than 
some  of  us  hold  in  denying  it.  The  distinction  between 
our  doctrine  of  baptismal  regeneration,  and  the  ancient 
Scripture  view,  is  too  broad  and  palpable  to  be  mis- 
taken. According  to  the  modern  church  dogma,  no 
faith,  in  the  parents,  is  necessary  to  the  effect  of  the  rite. 
Sponsors,  too,  are  brought  in  between  all  parents  and 
their  duty,  to  assume  the  very  office  which  belongs  only 
to  them.  And,  what  is  worse,  the  child  is  said  to  be 
actually  regenerated  by  the  act  of  the  priest.  Accord- 
ing to  the  more  ancient  view,  or  that  of  the  Scriptures, 
nothing  depends  upon  the  priest  or  minister,  save  that 
he  execute  the  rite  in  due  form.  The  regeneration  is 
not  actual,  but  only  presumptive,  and  every  thing  de- 
pends upon  the  organic  law  of  character  pertaining  be- 
tween the  parent  and  the  child,  the  church  and  the  child, 
thus  upon  duty  and  holy  living  and  gracious  exam- 
ple. The  child  is  too  young  to  choose  the  rite  for  him- 
self, but  the  parent,  having  him  as  it  were  in  his  own 
life,  is  allowed  the  confidence  that  his  own  faith  and 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS  47 

character  will  be  reproduced  in  the  child,  and  grow  up 
in  his  growth,  and  that  thus  the  propriety  of  the  rite  as 
a  seal  of  faith  will  not  be  violated.  In  giving  us  this 
rite,  on  the  grounds  stated,  God  promises,  in  fact,  on 
his  part,  to  dispense  that  spiritual  grace  which  is  neces- 
sary to  the  fulfillment  of  its  import.  In  this  way  too 
is  it  seen  that  the  Christian  economy  has  a  place  for 
persons  of  all  ages ;  for  it  would  be  singular  if,  after  all 
we  say  of  the  universality  of  God's  mercy  as  a  gift  to 
the  human  race,  it  could  yet  not  limber  itself  to  man, 
so  as  to  adapt  a  place  for  the  age  of  childhood,  but  must 
leave  a  full  fourth  part  of  the  race,  the  part  least  hard- 
ened in  evil  and  tenderest  to  good,  unrecognized  and 
unprovided  for — gathering  a  flock  without  lambs,  or,  I 
should  rather  say,  gathering  a  flock  away  from  the 
lambs.  Such  is  not  the  spirit  of  Him  who  said,  "  for- 
bid them  not,  for  of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven." 
Therefore  we  bring  them  into  the  school  of  Christ  and 
the  pale  of  his  mercy  with  us,  there  to  be  trained  up  in 
the  holy  nurture  of  the  Lord.  And  then  the  result  is 
to  be  tested  afterwards,  or  at  an  advanced  period  of  life, 
by  trying  their  character  in  the  same  way  as  the  char- 
acter of  all  Christians  is  tried  ;  for  many  are  baptized 
in  adult  age,  who  truly  do  not  believe,  as  is  afterwards 
discovered.  And  yet  our  Baptist  brethren  never  re- 
baptize  them,  notwithstanding  all  they  say  of  faith  as 
the  necessary  condition  of  baptism. 

But  there  are  two  objections  to  this  view  of  Christian 
nurture,  which,  if  they  are  not  removed,  may  even  suf- 
fice to  break  the  force  of  my  argument. 


48  WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS. 

1.  A  theoretical  objection,  that  it  leaves  no  room  for 
the  sovereignty  of  God,  in  appointing  the  moral  char- 
acter of  men  and  families.  Thus  it  is  declared  that  "  all 
are  not  Israel  who  are  of  Israel,"  and  that  God,  before 
the  children  Jacob  and  Esau  had  done  either  good  or 
evil,  professed  his  love  to  one,  and  his  rejection  of  the 
other.  But  the  wonder  is,  in  this  case  of  Rebecca  and 
her  children,  that  such  a  mother  did  not  ruin  them  both. 
A  partial  mother,  scorning  one  child,  teaching  the  other 
to  lie  and  trick  his  blind  father,  and  extort  from  a  starv- 
ing brother  his  birthright  honor,  can  not  be  said  to  fur- 
nish a  very  good  test  of  the  power  of  Christian  educa- 
tion. But  show  me  the  case,  where  the  whole  conduct 
of  the  parents  has  been  such  as  it  should  be  to  produce 
the  best  effects,  and  where  the  sovereignty  of  God  has 
appointed  the  ruin  of  the  children,  whether  all,  or  any 
one  of  them.  The  sovereignty  of  God  has  always  a 
relation  to  means,  and  we  are  not  authorized  to  think 
of  it,  in  any  case,  as  separated  from  means. 

2.  An  objection  from  observation — asking  why  it  is, 
if  our  doctrine  be  ^rue,  that  many  persons,  remarkable 
for  their  piety,  have  yet  been  so  unfortunate  in  their 
children  ?  Because,  I  answer,  many  persons,  remark- 
able for  their  piety,  are  yet  very  disagreeable  persons, 
and  that  too,  by  reason  of  some  very  marked  defect  in 
their  religious  character.  They  display  just  that  spirit, 
and  act  in  just  that  manner,  which  is  likely  to  make 
religion  odious — the  more  odious,  the  more  urgently 
they  commend  it,  Sometimes  they  appear  well  to  the 
world  one  remove  distant  from  them,  they  shine  well  in 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS.  49 

their  written  biography,  but  one  living  in  their  family 
will  know  what  others  do  not ;  and  if  their  children 
turn  out  badly,  will  never  be  at  a  loss  for  the  reason. 
Many  persons,  too,  have  such  defective  views  of  the 
manner  of  teaching  appropriate  to  early  childhood,  that 
they  really  discourage  their  children.  "  Fathers  pro- 
voke not  your  children  to  anger,"  says  one,  "  lest  they 
be  discouraged  ;"  implying  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as 
encouraging,  and  such  a  thing  as  discouraging  good 
principle  and  piety  in  a  child.  And  there  are  other 
ways  of  discouraging  children  besides  provoking  them 
to  an  angry  and  wounded  feeling  by  harsh  ^eatment. 

I  once  took  up  a  book,  from  a  Sabbath-school  library, 
one  problem  of  which  was  to  teach  a  child  that  he  wants 
a  new  heart.  A  lovely  boy  (for  it  was  a  narrative)  was 
called  every  day  to  resolve  that  he  would  do  no  wrong 
that  day,  a  task  which  he  undertook  most  cheerfully, 
at  first,  and  even  with  a  show  of  delight.  But,  before 
the  sun  went  down,  he  was  sure  to  fall  into  some  ill- 
temper  or  be  overtaken  by  some  infirmity.  Where- 
upon, the  conclusion  was  immediately  sprung  upon 
him  that  he  "  wanted  a  new  heart."  We  are  even 
amazed  that  any  teacher  of  ordinary  intelligence  should 
not  once  have  imagined  how  she  herself,  or  how  the 
holiest  Christian  living,  would  fare  under  such  kind  of 
regimen ;  how  she  would  discover  every  day,  and  prob- 
ably some  hours  before  sunset,  that  she  too  wanted  a 
new  heart  ?  And  the  practical  cruelty  of  the  experi- 
ment is  yet  more  to  be  deplored,  than  its  want  of  con- 
sideration.    Had  the  problem  been  how  to  discourage 


50  WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS. 

most  effectually  every  ingenuous  struggle  of  diildhood, 
no  readier  or  surer  method  could  Have  been  devised. 

Simply  to  tell  a  child,  as  he  just  begins  to  make 
acquaintance  with  words,  that  he  "  must  have  a  new 
heart  before  he  can  be  good,"  is  to  inflict  a  double  dis- 
couragement. First,  he  can  not  guess  what  this  tech- 
nical phraseology  means,  and  thus  he  takes  up  the 
impression  that  he  can  do  or  think  nothing  right,  till 
he  is  able  to  comprehend  what  is  above  his  age — why 
then  should  he  make  the  endeavor  ?  Secondly,  he  is  told 
that  he  must  have  a  new  heart  hefoi^e  he  can  be  good, 
not  that  he  may  hope  to  exercise  a  renewed  spirit,  in 
the  endeavor  to  be  good — why  then  attempt  what  must 
be  worthless,  till  something  previous  befalls  him  ?  Dis- 
couraged thus  on  every  side,  his  tender  soul  turns  hither 
and  thither,  in  hopeless  despair,  and  finally  he  consents 
to  be  what  he  must — a  sinner  against  God,  and  that 
only.  Well  is  it,  under  such  a  process,  wearing  down 
his  childish  soul  into  soreness  and  despair  of  good,  seal- 
ing up  his  nature  in  silence  and  cessation  as  regards  all 
right  endeavors,  and  compelling  him  to  turn  his  feel- 
ings into  other  channels,  where  he  shall  find  his  good 
in  evil — well  is  it,  I  sa}^,  if  he  has  not  contracted  a  dis- 
like to  the  very  subject  of  religion,  as  inveterate  as  the 
subject  is  impossible. 

Many  teach  in  this  way,  no  doubt,  with  the  best  in- 
tentions imaginable ;  their  design  is  only  to  be  faithful, 
and  sometimes  they  appear  even  to  think  that  the  more 
they  discourage  their  children,  the  better  and  more  faith- 
ful they  are.     But  the  mistake,  if  not  cruelly  meant,  is 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS.  51 

certainly  most  cruel  in  the  experience ;  and  it  is  just 
this  mistake,  I  am  confident,  which  accounts  for  a  large 
share  of  the  unhappy  failures  made  by  Christian  pa- 
rents, in  the  training  of  their  children.  Eather  should 
they  begin  with  a  kind  of  teaching  suited  to  the  age  of 
the  child.  First  of  all,  they  should  rather  seek  to  teach 
a  feeling  than  a  doctrine  ;  to  bathe  the  child  in  their  own 
feeling  of  love  to  God,  and  dependence  on  him,  and 
contrition  for  wrong  before  him,  bearing  up  their  child's 
heart  in  their  own,  not  fearing  to  encourage  every  good 
motion  they  can  call  into  exercise ;  to  make  what  is 
good,  happy  and  attractive,  what  is  wrong,  odious  and 
hateful ;  then  as  the  understanding  advances,  to  give  it 
food  suited  to  its  capacity,  opening  upon  it,  gradually 
the  more  difficult  views  of  Christian  doctrine  and 
experience. 

Sometimes  Christian  parents  fail  of  success  in  the 
religious  training  of  their  children,  because  the  church 
counteracts  their  effort  and  example.  The  church 
makes  a  bad  atmosphere  about  the  house,  and  the  poi- 
son comes  in  at  the  doors  and  windows.  It  is  rent  by 
divisions,  burnt  up  by  fanaticism,  frozen  by  the  chill 
of  a  worldly  spirit,  petrified  in  a  rigid  and  dead  ortho- 
doxy. It  makes  no  element  of  genial  warmth  and  love 
about  the  child,  according  to  the  intention  of  Christ  in 
its  appointment,  but  gives  to  religion,  rather,  a  forbid- 
ding aspect,  and  thus,  instead  of  assisting  the  parent, 
becomes  one  of  the  worst  impediments  to  his  success. 
What  kind  of  element  the  world  makes  about  the  child 
is  of  little  consequence ;  for  here  there  is  no  pretence 


52  WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS. 

of  piety.  But  wlien  the  school  of  Christ  makes  itself 
an  element  of  sin  and  death,  the  child's  baptism  be- 
comes as  great  a  fiction  as  the  church  itself,  and  the 
arrangements  of  divine  mercy  fail  of  their  intended 
power.  There  are,  in  short,  too  many  ways  of  account- 
ing for  the  failure  of  success,  in  the  family  training  of 
those  who  are  remarkable  for  their  piety,  without  being 
led  to  doubt  the  correctness  of  my  argument  in  these 
discourses. 

To  sum  up  all,  we  conclude,  not  that  every  child  can 
certainly  be  made  to  grow  up  in  Christian  piety — noth- 
ing is  gained  by  asserting  so  much,  and  perhaps  I  could 
not  prove  it  to  be  true,  neither  can  any  one  prove  the 
contrary — I  merely  show  that  this  is  the  true  idea  and 
aim  of  Christian  nurture  as  a  nurture  of  the  Lord.  It 
is  presumptively  true  that  such  a  result  can  be  realized, 
just  as  it  is  presumptively  true  that  a  school  will  for- 
ward the  pupils  in  knowledge,  though  possibly  some- 
times it  may  fail  to  do  it.  And,  without  such  a  pre- 
sumption, no  parent  can  do  his  duty  and  fill  his  ofiice 
well,  any  more  than  it  is  possible  to  make  a  good  school, 
in  the  expectation  that  the  scholars  will  learn  something 
five  or  ten  years  hence,  and  not  before. 

To  give  this  subject  its  practical  effect,  let  me 
urge  it — 

1.  [Jpon  the  careful  attention  of  those  who  neglect, 
or  decline,  offering  their  children  in  baptism.  Some  of 
you  are  simply  indifferent  to  this  duty,  not  seeing  what 
good  it  can  do  to  baptize  a  child  ;  others  have  positive 
theological  objections  to  it.     With  the  former  class  I 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS.  63 

certainly  agree,  so  far  as  to  admit  that  baptism,  as  an 
operation,  can  do  no  good  to  your  child ;  but,  if  it  has 
no  importance  in  what  it  operates,  it  has  the  greatest 
importance  in  what  it  signifies ;  and,  what  is  more  to  be 
tieplored  by  yon,  the  withholding  it  signifies  as  much, 
viz :  that  you  yourselves  have  no  sense  of  the  relation 
that  subsists  between  your  character  and  that  of  your 
child,  and  as  little  of  the  mercy  that  Christ  intends  for 
your  child,  by  including  him  with  you  in  his  fold,  to 
grow  up  there  by  your  side  in  the  same  common  hopes. 
Had  you  any  just  sense  of  these  things,  you  would  look 
upon  the  baptism  of  your  child  as  a  rite  of  as  great 
importance  and  spiritual  propriety  as  your  own  ;  for,  in 
neither  case,  has  the  form  any  value  beyond  what  it 
signifies.  The  other  class  among  you  suffer  the  same 
defect ;  for  it  is  my  settled  conviction  that  no  man  ever 
objected  to  infant  baptism,  who  had  not  at  the  bottom 
of  his  objections,  false  views  of  Christian  education — 
who  did  not  hold  a  notion  of  individualism,  in  regard 
to  Christian  character  in  childhood,  which  is  justified, 
neither  by  observation  nor  by  Scripture. 

It  is  the  prevalence  of  false  views,  on  this  subject, 
which  creates  so  great  difficulty  in  sustaining  infant 
baptism  in  our  churches.  If  children  are  to  grow  up 
in  sin,  to  be  converted  -when  they  come  to  the  age  of 
maturity,  if  this  is  the  only  aim  and  expectation  of 
family  nurture,  there  really  is  no  meaning  or  dignity 
whatever  in  the  rite.  They  are  even  baptized  into  sin, 
and  every  propriety  of  the  rite  as  a  seal  of  faith  is  vio- 
lated.    And  it  is  the  feeling  of  this  impropriety  which 


54  WHAT    CHKISTIAN    NUETURE    IS. 

lies  at  tlie  basis  of  all  your  objections.  Eeturning  to 
tlie  old  Scripture  doctrine  of  an  organic  law,  connecting 
the  cliild  morally  with  the  parents,  so  that  he  is,  as  it 
were,  included  in  them,  to  grow  up  in  their  life ;  per- 
ceiving then  that  he  is  a  kind  of  rudimental  being, 
coming  up  gradually  into  a  separate  and  complete  indi- 
viduality, having  the  parental  life  extended  to  him,  first, 
with  an  almost  absolutely  controlling  power,  then  less 
and  less,  till  he  takes,  at  length,  the  helm  of  his  own 
spirit — every  difficulty  that  you  now  feel  vanishes,  and 
the  rite  of  infant  baptism  becomes  one  of  the  greatest 
beauty,  and  perfectly  coincident  with  the  spirit  and  the 
rules  of  adult  baptism.  The  very  command,  "  believe 
and  be  baptized,"  of  which  so  much  is  made,  is  exactly 
met,  and  with  no  modifications,  save  what  are  necessary 
to  suit  the  peculiar  state  and  age  of  childhood  :  for  the 
child,  being  included  as  it  were  in  the  parental  life,  is 
accounted  presumptively  one  with  the  parents,  and 
sealed  with  the  seal  of  their  faith. 

And  it  would  certainly  be  very  singular  if  Christ 
Jesus,  in  a  scheme  of  mercy  for  the  world,  had  found 
no  place  for  infants. and  little  children:  more  singular 
still,  if  he  had  given  them  the  place  of  adults ;  and 
worse  than  singular,  if  he  had  appointed  them  to  years 
of  sin  as  the  necessary  preparation  for  his  mercy.  But 
if  you  see  him  counting  them  one  with  you,  bringing 
them  tenderly  into  his  fold  with  you,  there  to  grow  up 
in  him,  you  will  not  doubt  that  he  has  given  them  a 
place  exactly  and  beautifully  suited  to  them.  And  is 
it  for  you  to  withhold  them  from  that  place  ?     Is  it 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS.  55 

worttiy  of  your  tenderness,  as  a  Christian  parent,  to 
leave  tliem  outside  of  the  fold,  when  the  gate  is  open, 
only  taking  care  to  go  in  yourself?  I  will  not  accuse 
you  of  intended  wrong,  but  I  am  quite  sure  your 
thoughts  are  not  as  God's  thoughts,  and  I  ask  you  to 
study  this  question  again,  and  more  deeply.  You  are 
giving  your  children,  as  they  grow  up,  impressions  that 
will  assuredly  be  very  injurious  to  them,  and  robbing 
them  of  impressions  that  would  have  great  power  and 
value  to  their  minds.  What  can  be  worse,  what  can 
make  them  aliens,  more  sensibly,  from  Christ's  sympa- 
thies, what  can  more  effectually  discourage  and  chill 
them  to  all  thoughts  of  a  good  life,  than  to  make  them 
feel  that  Christ  has  no  place  for  them  till  their  sins  are 
ripe,  and  they  are  capable  of  a  grace  that  is  now  above 
their  years  ?  What  more  persuasive,  than  to  know  that 
he  has  taken  them  into  his  school  already,  to  grow  up 
round  him  as  disciples  ?  And  if  God  should  call  you  to 
himself,  what  will  draw  upon  their  hearts  more  tenderly 
than  to  remember  that  the  father  and  mother  whose 
name  they  revere,  brought  them  believingly  in  with 
themselves,  to  be  owned  in  that  general  assembly  of  the 
just  which  occupies  both  worlds,  and  become  partakers 
with  them  there,  in  the  grace  which  is  now  their  song  ? 
You  rob  yourselves  too  of  an  influence  which  is  nec- 
essary to  a  right  fulfillment  of  your  duty.  Their  char- 
acter, you  say,  is  their  own  ;  let  them  believe  for  them- 
selves and  be  baptized  when  they  will.  You  have 
never  the  same  genial  feeling  that  you  would,  if  you 
regarded  them  as  morally  linked  to  your  character  and 


56  WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS. 

drawing  from  you  the  mold  of  their  being.  You  are  not 
kept  in  the  same  state  of  carefulness  and  spiritual  ten- 
derness. ISTo  matter  if  you  are  cold  to  them,  at  times, 
and  do  not  always  live  Christ  in  the  house,  they  are 
growing  up  to  be  converted,  and  almost  any  thing  is 
good  enough  for  conversion  I  Christ  himself,  too,  has  no 
such  relation  to  you,  in  your  family,  as  to  make  your 
piety  a  domestic  spirit.  He  has  not  gathered  your  chil- 
dren round  you,  as  a  flock  of  young  disciples,  pouring 
all  his  tenderness  into  your  family  ties,  to  make  them  ve- 
hicles of  mercy  and  blessing.  Once  more  I  ask  you  to 
consider  whether  God  is  not  better  to  you  than  you  your- 
selves have  thought,  and  whether,  in  withholding  your 
children  from  God,  you  are  not  like  to  fall  as  far  short 
of  your  duty,  as  you  do  of  the  privilege  offered  you. 

2.  What  motives  are  laid  upon  all  Christian  parents, 
by  the  doctrine  I  have  established,  to  make  the  first 
article  of  family  discipline  a  constant  and  careful  disci- 
pline of  themselves.  I  would  not  undervalue  a  strong 
and  decided  government  in  families.  No  family  can  be 
rightly  trained  without  it.  But  there  is  a  kind  of  vir- 
tue, my  brethren,  which  is  not  in  the  rod — the  virtue,  I 
mean,  of  a  truly  good  and  sanctified  life.  And  a  reign 
of  brute  force  is  much  more  easily  maintained,  than  a 
reign  whose  power  is  righteousness  and  love.  There 
are,  too,  I  must  warn  you,  many  who  talk  much  of  the 
rod  as  the  orthodox  symbol  of  parental  duty,  but  who 
might  really  as  well  be  heathens  as  Christians;  who 
only  storm  about  their  house  with  heathenish  ferocity, 
who  lecture,  and  threaten,  and  castigate,  and  bruise. 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS.  57 

and  call  this  family  government.  They  even  dare  to 
speak  of  this  as  the  nurture  of  the  Lord.  So  much 
easier  is  it  to  be  violent  than  to  be  holy,  that  they  sub- 
stitute force  for  goodness  and  grace,  and  are  wholly 
unconscious  of  the  imposture.  It  is  frightful  to  think 
how  they  batter  and  bruise  the  delicate,  tender  souls 
of  their  children,  extinguishing  in  them  what  they 
ought  to  cultivate,  crushing  that  sensibility  which  is 
the  hope  of  their  being,  and  all  in  the  sacred  name  of 
Christ  Jesus.  By  no  such  summary  process  can  you 
dispatch  your  duties  to  your  children.  You  are  not  to 
be  a  savage  to  them,  but  a  father  and  a  Christian.  Your 
real  aim  and  study  must  be  to  infuse  into  them  a  new 
life,  and,  to  this  end,  the  Life  of  God  must  perpetually 
reign  in  you.  Grathered  round  you  as  a  family,  they 
are  all  to  be  so  many  motives,  strong  as  the  love  you 
bear  them,  to  make  you  Christ-like  in  your  spirit.  It 
must  be  seen  and  felt  with  them  that  religion  is  a  first 
thing  with  you.  And  it  must  be  first,  not  in  words 
and  talk,  but  visibly  first  in  your  love — that  which 
fixes  your  aims,  feeds  your  enjoyments,  sanctifies  your 
pleasures,  supports  your  trials,  satisfies  your  wants, 
contents  your  ambition,  beautifies  and  blesses  your 
character.  ISTo  mock  piety,  no  sanctimony  of  phrase, 
or  longitude  of  face  on  Sundays  will  sufiice.  You  must 
live  in  the  light  of  God,  and  hold  such  a  spirit  in 
exercise  as  you  wish  to  see  translated  into  your  chil- 
dren. You  must  take  them  into  your  feeling,  as  a 
loving  and  joyous  element,  and  beget,  if  by  the  grace 
of  God  you  may,  the  spirit  of  your  own  heart  in  theirs. 


58  WHAT    CHEISTIAN    NURTUKE    IS. 

This  is  Cliristian  education,  tlie  nurture  of  the  Lord. 
Ah,  how  dismal  is  the  contrast  of  a  half- worldly,  carnal 
piety;  proposing  money  as  the  good  thing  of  life;  stimu- 
lating ambition  for  place  and  show ;  provoking  ill-nature 
by  petulance  and  falsehood ;  praying,  to  save  the  rule 
of  family  worship ;  having  now  and  then  a  religious  fit, 
and,  when  it  is  on,  weeping  and  exhorting  the  family 
to  undo  all  that  the  life  has  taught  them  to  do ;  and 
then,  when^the  passions  have  burnt  out  their  fire,  drop- 
ping down  again  to  sleep  in  the  embers,  only  hoping 
still  that  the  family  will  sometime  be  converted  !  When 
shall  we  discover  that  families  ought  to  be  ruined  by 
such  training  as  this  ?  When  shall  we  turn  ourselves 
wholly  to  God,  and  looking  on  our  children  as  one  with 
us  and  drawing  their  character  from  us,  make  them 
arguments  to  duty  and  constancy — duty  and  constancy 
not  as  a  burden,  but,  since  they  are  enforced  by  motives 
so  dear,  our  pleasure  and  delight.  For  these  ties  and 
duties  exist  not  for  the  religious  good  of  our  children 
only,  but  quite  as  much  for  our  own.  And  God,  who 
understands  us  well,  has  appointed  them  to  keep  us  in 
a  perpetual  frame  of  love;  for  so  ready  is  our  bad 
nature  to  kindle  with  our  good,  and  burn  with  it,  that 
what  we  call  our  piety,  is,  otherwise,  in  constant  danger 
of  Regenerating  into  a  fiery,  censorious,  unmerciful  and 
intolerant  spirit. 

Hence  it  is  that  monks  have  been  so  prone  to  perse- 
cution. Not  dwelling  with  children  as  the  objects  of 
affection,  having  their  hearts  softened  by  no  family 
love,  their  life  identified  with  no  objects  that  excite 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS.  59 

gentleness,  their  nature  hardens  into  a  Christian  abstrac- 
tion, and  blood  and  doctrine  go  together.  Therefore 
God  hath  set  Israel  in  families,  that  the  argument  to 
duty  may  come  upon  the  gentle  side  of  your  nature, 
and  fall,  as  a  baptism,  on  the  head  of  your  natural  affec- 
tions. Your  character  is  to  be  a  parent  character,  in- 
folding lovingly  the.  spirits  of  your  children,  as  birds 
are  gathered  in  the  nest,  there  to  be  sheltered  and  fed, 
and  got  ready  for  the  flight.  Every  hour  is  to  be  an 
hour  of  duty,  every  look  and  smile,  every  reproof  and 
care,  an  effusion  of  Christian  love.  For  it  is  the  very 
beauty  of  the  work  you  have  to  do  that  you  are  to 
cherish  and  encourage  good,  and  live  a  better  life  into 
the  spirits  of  your  children. 

8.  It  is  to  be  deeply  considered,  in  connection  with 
this  view  of  family  nurture,  whether  it  does  not  meet 
many  of  the  deficiencies  we  deplore  in  the  Christian 
character  of  our  times,  and  the  present  state  of  our 
churches.  We  have  been  expecting  to  thrive  too  much 
by  conquest,  and  too  little  by  growth.  I  desire  to  speak 
with  all  caution  of  what  are  very  unfortunately  called 
revivals  of  religion ;  for,  apart  from  the  name,  which  is 
modern,  and  from  certain  crudities  and  excesses  that  go 
with  it — which  name,  crudities,  and  excesses  are  wholly 
adventitious  as  regards  the  substantial  merits  of  such 
scenes — apart  from  these,  I  say,  there  is  abundant  rea- 
son to  believe  that  God's  spiritual  economy  includes 
varieties  of  exercise,  answering,  in  all  important  re- 
spects, to  these  visitations  of  mercy,  so  much  coveted 
in  our  churches.     They  are  needed.     A  perfectly  uni- 


60  WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS. 

form  demonstration  in  religion  is  not  possible  or  desira- 
ble. Nothing  is  thus  uniform  but  death.  Our  exercise 
varies  every  year  and  day  from  cliildhood  onward. 
Society  is  going  through  new  modes  of  exercise  in  the 
same  manner,  excited  by  new  subjects,  running  into 
new  types  of  feeling,  and  struggling  with  new  combina- 
tions of  thought.  Quite  as  necessary  is  it  that  all  holy 
principle  should  have  a  varied  exercise — now  in  one 
duty,  now  in  another ;  now  in  public  aims  and  efforts, 
now  in  bosom  struggles ;  now  in  social  methods,  now 
in  those  which  are  solitary  and  private ;  now  in  high 
emotion,  now  in  deliberative  thought  and  study.  Ac- 
cordingly the  Christian  church  began  with  a  scene  of 
extraordinary  social  demonstration,  and  the  like,  in  one 
form  or  another,  may  be  traced  in  every  period  of  its 
history  since  that  day. 

But  the  difficulty  is  with  us  that  we  idolize  such 
scenes,  and  make  them  the  whole  of  our  religion.  We 
assume  that  nothing  good  is  doing,  or  can  be  done  at 
any  other  time.  And  what  is  even  worse,  we  often 
look  upon  these  scenes,  and  desire  them,  rather  as 
scenes  of  victory,  than  of  piety.  They  are  the  harvest- 
times  of  conversion,  and  conversion  is  too  nearly  every 
thing  with  us.  In  particular  we  see  no  way  to  gather 
in  disciples,  save  by  means  of  certain  marked  experi- 
ences, developed  in  such  scenes,  in  adult  years.  Our 
very  children  can  possibly  come  to  no  good,  save  in 
this  way.  Instrumentalities  are  invented  to  compass 
our  object,  that  are  only  mechanical,  and  the  hope  of 
mere  present  effect  is  supposed  to  justify  them.     Present 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN     NUllTUPF-    TS  61 

effect,  in  the  view  of  many,  justifies  any  thing  and  every 
thing.  We  strain  every  nerve  of  motion,  exhaust 
every  capacity  of  endurance,  and  push  on  till  nature 
sinks  in  exhaustion.  We  preach  too  much,  and  live 
Christ  too  little.  We  do  many  things  which,  in  a 
cooler  mood,  are  seen  to  hurt  the  dignity  of  religion, 
and  which  somewhat  shame  and  sicken  ourselves. 
Hence  the  present  state  of  religion  in  our  country. 
We  have  worked  a  vein  till  it  has  run  out.  The 
churches  are  exhausted.*  There  is  little  to  attract 
them,  when  they  look  upon  the  renewal  of  scenes 
through  which  many  of  them  have  passed.  They  look 
about  them,  with  a  sigh,  to  ask  if  possibly  there  is  no 
better  way,  and  some  are  ready  to  find  that  better  way, 
in  a  change  of  their  religion.  Nothing  different  from 
thM  ought  to  have  been  expected.  No  nation  can  long 
thrive  by  a  spirit  of  conquest ;  no  more  can  a  church. 
There  must  be  an  internal  growth,  that  is  made  by  holy 
industry,  in  the  common  walks  of  life  and  duty. 

Let  us  turn  now,  not  away  from  revivals  of  religion, 
certainly  not  away  from  the  conviction  that  God  will 
bring  upon  the  churches  tides  of  spiritual  exercise,  and 
vary  his  divine  culture  by  times  and  seasons  suited  to 
their  advancement ;  but  let  us  turn  to  inquire  whether 
there  is  not  a  fund  of  increase  in  the  very  bosom  of  the 
church  itself.  Let  us  try  if  we  may  not  train  up  our 
children  in  the  way  that  they  should  go.  Simply  this,  if 
we  can  do  it,  will  make  the  church  multiply  her  numbers 

*  This  was  written,  I  biilieve,  m  the  year,  A.  D.,  1846. 

6 


62  WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS. 

msLDy  fold  more  rapidly  tlian  now,  with  the  advantage 
that  many  more  will  be  gained  from  without  than  now. 
For  she  will  cease  to'^hold  a  mere  piety  of  occasions,  a 
piety  whose  chief  use  is  to  get  up  occasions ;  she  will 
follow  a  gentler  and  more  constant  method,  as  her  duty 
is  more  constant,  and  blends  with  the  very  life  of  her 
natural  affections.  Her  piety  will  be  of  a  more  even 
and  genial  quality,  and  will  be  more  respected.  She 
will  not  strive  and  cry,  but  she  will  live.  The  school 
of  John  the  Baptist  will  be  succeeded  by  the  school  of 
Christ,  as  a  dew  comes  after  a  fire.  Families  will  not 
be  a  temptation  to  you,  half  the  time  hurrying  you  on 
to  get  money,  and  prepare  a  show,  and  the  other  half,  a 
motive  to  repentance  and  shame,  and  profitless  exhorta- 
tion ;  but  all  the  time,  an  argument  for  Christian  love 
and  holy  living.  _         ♦ 

Then  also  the  piety  of  the  coming  age  will  be  deeper, 
and  more  akin  to  habit  than  ours,  because  it  begun 
earlier.  It  will  have  more  of  an  air  of  naturalness,  and 
will  be  less  a  work  of  will.  A  generation  will  come 
forward,  who  will  have  been  educated  to  all  good  un- 
dertakings and  enterprises — ardent  without  fanaticism, 
powerful  without  machinery.  Not  born,  so  generally, 
in  a  storm,  and  brought  to  Christ  by  an  abrupt  transi- 
tion, the  latter  portion  of  life  will  not  have  an  unequal 
war  to  maintain  with  the  beginning,  but  life  will  be 
more  nearly  one,  and  in  harmony  with  itself.  Is  not 
this  a  result  to  be  desired  ?  Could  we  tell  our  Ameri- 
can churches,  at  this  moment,  what  they  want,  should 
we  not  tell  them  this  ?     Neither,  if  God,  as  many  fear, 


WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS  63 

istibout  to  bring  -upon  his  church  a  day  of  wrath  and 
stormy  conflict,  let  any  one  suspect  that  such  a  kind  of 
piety  will  want  vigor  and  nerve  to  withstand  the  fiery 
assaults  anticipated.  See  what  turn  the  mind  of  our 
apostle  took  when  he  was  arming  his  disciples  for  the 
great  conflict  of  their  age.  Children,  obey  your  parents 
— Fathers,  provoke  not  your  children — Servants,  be 
obedient  to  your  masters — Masters,  forbear  threaten- 
ing— Finally,  to  include  all,  put  on  the  whole  armor 
of  God.  As  if  the  first  thought,  in  arming  the  church 
for  great  trials  and  stout  victories,  was  to  fill  common 
life  and  the  relations  of  the  house  with  a  Christian 
spirit.  There  is  no  truer  truth,  or  more  sublime.  Re- 
ligion never  thoroughly  penetrates  life,  till  it  becomes 
domestic.  Like  that  patriotic  fire  which  makes  a  nation 
invincible,  it  never  burns  with  inextinguishable  devo- 
tion till  it  burns  at  the  hearth. 

4.  Parents  who  are  not  religious  in  their  character, 
have  reason,  in  our  subject,  seriously  to  consider  what 
effect  they  are  producing,  and  likely  to  produce,  in 
their  children.  Probably  you  do  not  wish  them  to  be 
irreligious  ;  few  parents  have  the  hardihood  or  indiscre- 
tion to  desire  that  the  fear  of  God,  the  salutary  restraints 
of  religion,  should  be  removed  from  their  children. 
Possibly  you  exert  yourselves,  in  a  degree  to  give 
them  religious  council  and  instruction.  But,  alas ! 
how  difficult  is  it  for  you  to  convince  them,  by  words, 
of  the  value  of  what  you  practically  reject  yourselves. 
Have  I  not  shown  you  that  they  are  set  in  organic  con- 
nection with  you,  to  draw  their  spirit,  and  principles, 


64  WHAT    CHRISTIAN    NURTURE    IS 

and  character  from  yours  ?  What  then  are  they  daily 
deriving  from  you,  but  that  which  you  yourselves 
reveal,  in  your  prayerless  house,  and  at  your  thankless 
table  ?  Is  it  a  spirit  of  duty  and  Christian  love,  a  faith 
that  has  its  home  and  rest  in  other  worlds,  or  is  it  the 
carnal  spirit  of  gain,  indifference  to  God,  deadness  to 
Christ,  love  of  the  world,  pride,  ambition,  all  that  is 
earthly,  nothing  that  is  heavenly  ? 

Do  not  imagine  that  you  have  done  corrupting  them 
when  they  are  born.  Their  character  is  yet  to  be  born, 
and,  in  you,  is  to  have  its  parentage.  Your  spirit  is  to 
pass  into  them,  by  a  law  of  transition  that  is  natural, 
and  well  nigh  irresistible.  And  then  you  are  to  meet 
them  in  a  future  life,  and  see  how  much  of  blessing  or 
of  sorrow  they  will  impute  to  you — to  share  their  un- 
known future,  and  look  upon  yourselves  as  father  and 
mother  to  their  destiny.  Such  thoughts,  I  know,  are 
difficult  for  you  to  meet ;  difficult  because  they  open 
real  scenes,  which  you  are,  one  day,  to  look  upon. 
Loving  these  your  children,  as  most  assuredly  you 
do,  can  you  think  that  you  are  fulfilling  the  office  that 
your  love  requires  ?  Go  home  to  your  Christless  house, 
look  upon  them  all  as  they  gather  round  you,  and  ask 
it  of  your  love  faithfully  to  say,  whether  it  is  well 
between  you?  And  if  no  other  argument  can  draw 
you  to  God,  let  these  dear  living  arguments  come  into 
your  soul,  and  prevail  there. 


Ill 


THE  OSTRICH  NURTURE 

"  The  daughter  of  my  people  is  become  cruel,  like  the  ostriches  in  the 
wilderness." — Samuel  iv.  3. 

I  CITE  this  comparison  for  ttie  sake  of  the  compari- 
son itself,  and  not  to  make  an  example  of  the  mothers 
of  Israel  represented  in  it.  They  are  not  to  be  blamed, 
if,  in  the  terrors  of  the  siege  and  the  wild  feverings  of 
starvation,  the  voice  of  nature  has  been  stifled  in  their 
bosom.  Indeed,  it  is  the  wonder  of  the  prophet  him- 
self that,  while  the  coarse  sea-monsters  draw  out  the 
breast  and  faithfully  nurse  their  young,  the  human 
mother,  so  much  tenderer  and  more  loving,  can  be  so 
maddened  by  distress  as  to  become  like  the  ostrich,  and 
forget  the  cries  of  her  children. 

The  ostrich,  it  will  be  observed,  is  nature's  type  of 
all  unmotherhood.  She  hatches  her  young  without  in- 
cubation, depositing  her  eggs  in  the  sand  to  be  quick- 
ened by  the  solar  heat.  Her  ofiice  as  a  mother-bird  is 
there  ended.  When  the  young  are  hatched,  they  are  to 
go  forth  untended,  or  unmothered,  save  by  the  general 
motherhood  of  nature  itself  Hence  the  ostrich  is 
called  sometimes  the  "wicked,"  and  sometimes  the 
"  stupid"  bird.  Job  describes  her  with  a  feeling  of 
natural  dislike — "  Which  leaveth  her  eggs  in  the  earth, 


66  THE    OSTRICH    NURTURE 

and  warmeth  them  in  the  dust,  and  forgetteth  that  the 
foot  may  crush  them,  or  that  the  wild  beast  may  break 
them.  She  is  hardened  against  her  young  ones,  as 
though  they  were  not  hers,  her  labor  is  in  vain  without 
care,  [in  our  version,  "without  fear."]  Because  God 
hath  deprived  her  of  wisdom,  neither  hath  he  imparted 
unto  her  understanding."  In  other  words,  she  is  both 
heartless  and  senseless ;  too  heartless  to  care  for  her 
young,  and  too  senseless  to  maintain  a  motherhood  as 
genial  even  as  that  of  the  sand. 

Now  there  is  no  human  mother,  unless  it  be  in  some 
terrible  stress  of  siege  and  starvation,  when  the  mind 
itself  is  unsettled  by  the  wild  instigation  of  suffering, 
who  will  cease  from  the  bodily  care  and  feeding  of  her 
children.  And  yet  there  are  many  forms  of  nurture  for 
the  mind  and  character  of  children,  that  are  so  far 
resembled  to  the  ostrich  nurture,  as  to  be  fitly  repre- 
sented under  that  type.  Practices  are  adopted,  opin- 
ions accepted,  theories  of  church  life  and  conversion 
taught,  that  make  a  true  Christian  parentage  virtually 
impossible,  and  leave  the  child,  in  fact,  to  a  kind  of 
nurture  in  the  sands. 

What  I  propose,  accordingly,  at  the  present  time,  is 
to  characterize  these  modes  of  ostrich  nurture,  mis- 
called Christian,  showing  what  they  are,  and  the  real, 
though  doubtless  undesigned,  cruelty  of  them. 

As  a  curious  illustration  of  the  looseness  and  the  un- 
settled feeling  of  the  times,  in  regard  to  this  great  sub- 
ject, it  is  just  now  beginning  to  be  asserted  by  some, 


THE     OSTKICH    NURTURE  67 

that  the  true  principle  of  training  for  children  is  ex- 
actly that  of  the  ostrich,  viz :  no  training  at  all ;  the 
best  government,  no  government.  All  endeavors  to 
.fashion  them  by  the  parental  standards,  or  to  indlict 
them  into  the  belief  of  ^eir  parents,  is  alleged  to  be  a 
real  oppression  put  upon  their  natural  liberty.  It  is 
nothing  less,  it  is  said,  than  an  effort  to  fill  them  with 
prejudices,  and  put  them  under  the  sway  of  prejudices, 
all  their  lives  long.  Why  not  let  the  child  have  his 
own  way,  think  his  own  thoughts,  generate  his  own 
principles,  and  so  be  developed  in  the  freedom  and 
beauty  of  the  flowers  ?  Or,  if  he  should  sometimes  fall 
into  bad  tempers  and  disgraceful  or  uncomely  practices, 
as  flowers  do  not,  let  him  learn  how  to  correct  himself^ 
and  be  righted  by  his  own  discoveries.  Having  thus 
no  artificial  conscience  formed  to  hamper  his  natural 
freedom,  no  religious  scruples  and  superstitions  incul- 
cated to  be  a  detention,  or  limitation,  upon  his  impulses, 
he  will  grow  up  as  a  genuine  character,  stunted  by  no 
cant  or  afiectation ;  a  large-minded,  liberal,  original,  and 
beautiful  soul. 

This  kind  of  nurture  supposes,  evidently,  a  faith  in 
human  nature  that  is  total  and  complete.  As  the 
mother  ostrich  might  be  supposed  to  reason,  that  her 
eggs  are  ostrich's  eggs,  and  must  therefore  produce 
genuine  ostriches  and  nothing  else,  so  it  assumes  that 
human  children  will  grow  up,  left  to  themselves,  into 
the  most  genuine,  highest  style  of  human  character. 
"Whereas,  it  is  the  misery  of  human  children  that,  as 
free  beings,  answerable  for  their  choices  and  their  char- 


68  THE*  OSTRICH    NURTURE 

acter,  and  already  touclied  with  evil,  tliey  require  some 
training,  over  and  above  tlie  mere  indulgence  of  their 
natural  instincts.  They  can  not  be  left  to  merely  blos- 
som into  character ;  or,  if  they  are,  it  will  most  assur- 
edly be  any  sort  of  character  but  that  which  parental 
love  would  desire.  What  they  most  especially  want  is, 
what  no  ostrich  or  mere  animal  nurture  can  give  ;  to  be 
preoccupied  with  holy  principles  and  laws ;  to  have  pre- 
judices instilled  that  are  holy  prejudices;  and  so  to  be 
tempered  beforehand  by  moderating  and  guiding  influ- 
ences, such  as  their  perilous  freedom  and  hereditary 
damage  require. 

The  question  here  at  issue  does  not  really  need  to  be 
discussed,  but  it  will  greatly  instruct  and  impress  those 
parents  who  allow  their  minds  to  fluctuate  in  such 
looseness  as  quite  unsettles  the  feeling  of  their  obliga- 
tion, just  to  notice  the  immense  distinction  between  the 
relationship  of  human  parents  to  their  offspring,  and 
that  of  the  animals  to  theirs.  It  is  not  given  to  the  ani- 
mals, they  will  perceive,  as  to  men,  to  pass  any  results 
matured  by  their  own  experience,  to  their  posterity. 
They  prepare  no  inventions,  create  no  institutions 
for  their  offspring;  produce  no  sciences,  write  no  his- 
tories, preserve  no  records,  accumulate  no  property  or 
wealth  that  is  to  be  transmitted;  even  their  thoughts 
they  can  perpetuate  in  no  literary  treasures.  Hence, 
there  is  no  progress  among  them,  over  and  above  that 
small  physiological  improvement  that  may  pass  by  the 
laws  of  natural  propagation.  So  far  they  are  all 
ostriches.     All  they  can  do  is  to  follow  their  instincts, 


THE    OSTRICH    NURTURE  69 

and  leave  their  posterity  to  follow  them  over  again,  in 
the  same  manner,  beginning  at  the  same  point.  But 
with  men,  as  creatures  of  reason,  it  is  far  otherwise. 
They  are  creators,  all,  for  them  that  are  to  come  after. 
What  they  can  discover,  build,  produce,  acquire,  leatn, 
think,  enjoy,  they  are  to  transmit ;  giving  it  to  them 
that  come  after  to  begin  at  the  point  where  they  cease, 
and  have  the  full  advantage  of  their  opinions,  works, 
and  character.  One  of  their  first  duties,  therefore,  is 
to  educate  and  train  their  offspring,  transmitting  to 
them  what  they  have  known,  believed,  and  proved  by 
their  experience.  If  they  sometimes  transmit  their  low 
thoughts,  and  narrow  opinions,  and  mistaken  principles, 
and  so  far  give  their  children  a  great  disadvantage,  that 
is  but  a  necessary  evil  which  is  incidental  manifestly  to 
a  system  otherwise  beneficent,  and  for  that  they  are  of 
course  responsible.  If  nothing  were  to  pass  but  mere 
instincts,  the  disadvantage  would  be  far  greater,  and  the 
whole  scale  of  existence  lower.  How  unnatural  and 
monstrous,  therefore,  is  that  scheme  of  nurture  which 
requires  it  of  parents  to  pass  nothing,  or  as  little  as  pos- 
sible, to  their  children.  If  they  have  learned  wisdom, 
they  are  not  to  inculcate  that  wisdom,  lest  it  should 
create  a  prejudice  1  If  they  have  found  their  conscience 
and  the  principles  of  virtue,  to  be  their  truest  friends 
and  the  best  guardians  of  their  life,  they  are  not  to  ham- 
per their  children  by  subjecting  them  to  the  same !  If 
they  have  found  the  principal  joys  that  freshen  life  in 
God  and  the  faith  of  his  Son,  they  are  still  to  let  their 
children  find  their  own  sources  of  strength  and  joy  for 


70  THE    OSTRICH     NURTURE 

themselves,  and  not  to  train  them,  or  indoctrinate  tliem 
in  such  ways  of  blessing,  lest  perchance  they  be  not 
sufficiently  original  and  free  in  their  development ! 
Why,  if  they  were  to  discover  mines  and  hide  the 
discovery  forever,  or  acquire  immense  treasures  of 
property  appointing  them  by  their  will  to  be  sunk 
in  the  sea,  leaving  their  children  in  utter  destitution, 
they  would  not  be  as  false  to  their  office  of  parent- 
age !  God  has  given  it  to  them,  as  rational  creatures, 
to  transmit  all  possible  benefits  to  their  offspring.  And 
what  shall  they  more  carefully  transmit  than  what  is 
valuable  above  every  thing  else,  their  principles  and 
their  piety  ? 

We  find,  then,  a  most  solid  ground  for  the  obligations 
of  Christian  nurture.  It  is  one  of  the  grand  distinc- 
tions of  humanity  that  it  has  such  a  power  to  pass,  and 
is  set  in  such  a  duty  of  passing,  its  gifts,  principles,  and 
virtues,  on  to  the  ages  that  come  after.  Happily,  few 
will  need  to  be  convinced  of  this ;  and  yet  there  are  a 
great  many,  we  shall  find,  who  manage,  even  under 
what  they  regard  as  truly  Christian  pretexts,  to  main- 
tain schemes  of  nurture  so  nearly  unparental  and  un- 
natural, as  to  have  a  much  closer  affinity  with  the 
ostrich  nurture  than  they  suspect  themselves. 

We  have  many,  for  example,  who  have  taken  up 
notions  of  liberty,  or  free  moral  agency,  in  religion, 
that  separate  them  effectually  from  the  true  sense  of 
their  power  and  privilege  in  regard  to  their  children. 
Assuming  the  unquestionable  first  truth  that  religious 


THE     OSTRICH    NURTURE,  71 

virtue,  or  piety,  is  a  matter  strictly  personal,  the  free- 
will offering  of  obedience  and  duty  to  God,  they  sub- 
side into  the  impression  that  they  are  of  course  absolved 
from  any  close  responsibility  for  that  which  lies  so  en- 
tirely in  the  choices  of  their  children  themselves.  They 
may  not  take  their  absolution  by  any  formal  inference, 
and  may  not  even  be  aware  that  they  have  taken  it  at 
all ;  but  the  distinction  between  manhood  and  child- 
hood is  so  far  hidden,  or  slurred  over,  under  their 
supposed  principle  of  responsibility  grounded  in  free 
agency,  that  their  self-indulgence  is  accommodated,  by 
the  pretext,  more  easily  than  they  know.  Sometimes 
the  inference  w^ill  be  half  uttered  in  their  feeling ;  as 
when  they  ask,  only  not  aloud — "  after  all,  must  not  our 
children  answer  for  themselves?"  So  they  submit  re- 
signedly, to  the  supposed  necessity,  and  do  it  w^ith  so 
much  less  of  compunction,  because  they  consciously 
have  so  tender  a  feeling  for  their  children,  and  are  so 
much  pained  by  the  sense  of  their  religious  perils.  But 
the  submission  they  fall  into,  in  this  pious  way,  amounts, 
in  fact,  to  a  real  absolution,  not  seldom,  from  all  the 
finest,  tenderest,  most  faithful,  most  unworldly  cares  of 
their  parental  office.  They  subside  thus  into  a  habit  of 
remissness  and  religious  negligence,-  and  their  way  of  nur- 
ture becomes  unparental  even  as  that  of  the  ostriches. 

Their  blame  in  such  defections  from  duty  is  greater 
than  they  know.  For  God  has  probably  instituted  the 
reproductive  order  of  existence,  including  the  parental 
and  filial  relation,  with  a  special  design  to  mitigate  the 
perils  of  free  agency.     One  generation  is  to  be  ripe  in 


72  THE     OSTRICH    NURTURE. 

knowledge  and  character,  and  tlie  next  is  to  be  put  in 
cliarge  of  tlie  former,  in  the  tenderest,  most  flexible, 
most  dependent  state  possible,  to  be  by  them  inducted 
into  the  choices  where  their  safety  lies.  Furthermore, 
they  are  bound  to  fidelity  in  their  charge,  by  the  fact, 
that,  as  they  have  given  existence  to  the  subjects  of  it, 
so  they  have  also  communicated  the  poison  of  their 
own  fallen  state,  to  increase  the  perils  of  existence.  In 
this  manner,  God  has  put  it  upon  them  to  be  the  more 
strenuous  in  their  charge,  because  of  these  perils,  and 
expects,  by  means  of  their  fidelity,  to  reduce  the  other- 
wise disastrous  results  of  free  agency  to  the  smallest 
possible  measure.  Their  responsibility  in  the  parental 
office  is  not  diminished,  but  increased  even  a  hundred 
fold,  by  the  personal  liberty  and  strict  individuality  of 
their  children.  It  would  be  far  less  cruel  to  be  negli- 
gent of  their  bodily  wants ;  for  the  body  will  maintain 
its  growth,  and  will  even  manage  to  increase  in  robust- 
ness, when  it  is  poorly  clad  and  fed  upon  the  coarsest 
fare.  But  the  mind,  or  soul,  born  to  greater  perils  than 
want  or  the  weather,  even  the  tremendous  perils  of  un- 
taught liberty,  and  principles  unfixed,  waits,  at  the 
point  of  its  magnificent  infancy,  to  be  led  into  the 
choices,  tastes,  affinities,  and  habits,  that  are  to  be  the 
character  of  its  eternity.  Tenderness  every  where  else, 
and  remissness  here,  is  only  the  mockery  of  kindness. 
Let  the  first  want  be  first,  and  the  highest  nature  have 
the  promptest  care ;  and  if  any  thing  is  left  to  the  nur- 
ture of  the  sands,  let  it  be  the  body,  where  the  crime  of 
the  desertion  will  be  less  and  will  certainly  not  be  hid. 


THE    OSTRICH    NURTURE.  73 

Many  true  Christians,  again,  fall  oflP,  unwittingly, 
from  the  humanly  parental  modes  of  nurture,  in  taking 
up  notions  of  conversion  that  are  mechanical,  and 
proper  only  to  the  adult  age.  They  make  a  merit  of 
great  persistency  and  firmness,  in  asserting  the  univer- 
sal necessity  of  a  new  spiritual  birth ;  not  perceiving 
under  what  varieties  of  form  that  change  may  be 
wrought.  The  soul  must  be  exercised,  they  think,  in 
one  given  way,  viz :  by  a  struggle  with  sin,  a  conscious 
self-renunciation,  and  a  true  turning  to  Christ  for  mercy, 
followed  by  the  joy  and  peace  of  a  new  life  in  the 
Spirit.  A  child,  in  other  words,  can  be  born  of  God 
only  in  the  same  way  as  an  adult  can  be.  There  is 
no  quickening  grace,  or  new  creation  of  the  Spirit, 
proper  to  him  as  a  child.  K  he  dies  in  infancy,  God 
may,  it  is  true,  find  some  way,  possibl}^,  to  save  him, 
but  if  he  stays  among  the  living,  he  can  not  be  a 
Christian  till  he  is  older.  He  is  therefore  left,  in  this 
most  tender  and  beautiful  and  pliant  age,  in  a  condition 
most  of  all  unprivileged,  and  most  sadly  unhopeful. 
The  necessity  of  a  great  spiritual  change  is  upon  him, 
and  yet  he  is  wholly  incapable  of  the  change  I  What 
other  being  has  the  good  Lord  and  Father  of  the  world 
left  in  a  condition  as  pitiful  as  this  of  a  human  child  ? 
Even  the  most  wicked  and  hardened  of  men  has,  at 
least,  the  gate  of  conversion  left  open.  And  yet  there 
are  many  Christian  parents,  living  an  outwardly  decent 
and  fair  life,  who  consent,  without  difiiculty,  and  with 
a  kind  of  consciously  orthodox  merit,  to  this  very  un- 
natural and  truly  hard  lot  of  childhood,  and  fall  into 


74  THE    OSTRICH    NURTURE. 

easy  conformity  with  it.  Their  practically  accepted 
notion  of  Christian  nurture,  in  which  they  mean  to  be 
piously  faithful  is,  that  they  are  to  bring  up  their  chil- 
dren outside  of  all  possible  acceptance  with  God,  till 
such  time  as  their  conversion  may  be  looked  for  in  a 
church-wise  form.  And  their  whole  scheme  of  treat- 
ment corresponds.  They  indoctrinate  them  soundly  in 
respect  to  their  need  of  a  new  heart ;  tell  them  what 
conversion  is,  and  how  it  comes  to  pass  with  grown 
people  ;  pray  that  God  will  arrest  them  when  they  are 
old  enough  to  be  converted  according  to  the  manner ; 
drill  them,  meantime,  into  all  the  constraints,  separated 
from  all  the  hopes  and  liberties  of  religion  ;  turning  all 
their  little  misdoings  and  bad  tempers  into  evidences 
of  their  need  of  regeneration,  and  assuring  them  that 
all  such  signs  must  be  upon  them  till  after  they  have 
passed  the  change.  Their  nurture  is  a  nurture,  thus,  of 
despair ;  and  the  bread  of  life  itself,  held  before  them 
as  a  fruit  to  be  looked  upon,  but  not  tasted,  till  they 
are  old  enough  to  have  it  as  grown  people  do, 
finally  becomes  repulsive,  just  because  they  have  been 
so  long  repelled  and  fenced  away  from  it.  And  so  relig- 
ion itself,  pressed  down  upon  them  till  they  are  fatally 
sored  by  its  impossible  claims,  becomes  their  fixed 
aversion.  How  plain  is  it  that  such  kind  of  nurture  is 
unnatural  and,  though  it  be  not  so  intended,  unchris- 
tian. It  makes  even  the  loving  gospel  of  Jesus  a  most 
galling  chain  upon  the  neck  of  childhood ! — this  and 
nothing  more.  For  so  long  a  time,  and  that  the  most 
ductile  and  hopeful,  as  regards  all  new  implantings  of 


THE    OSTRICH    NURTURE.  75 

good,  it  really  proposes  nothing  but  to  have  the  depra- 
vated  nature  grow,  and  the  plague  of  sin  deepen  its  bad 
infection. 

Meantime,  it  will  be  strange,  if  the  parents  them- 
selves do  not  fall  away  from  all  that  is  necessary  to 
their  Christian  power,  when  the  conversion  of  their 
children  is  postponed,  in  this  manner,  by  the  merely 
adult  possibilities  of  their  gospel.  Why  should  they 
live  so  as  to  gain  their  children,  when  their  children 
are  not  to  be  gained  ?  Were  they  really  to  live  so  as 
to  make  their  house  an  element  of  grace,  the  atmos- 
phere of  their  life  an  element,  to  all  that  breathe  it,  of 
unworldly  feeling  and'^all  godly  aspiration,  their  me- 
chanical doctrine  of  conversion  would  scarcely  suffice  to 
keep  away  the  saving  mercies  of,,  God  from  their  chil- 
dren. Their  children  would  still  be  converted  even 
before  the  permissible  time,  and  burst  up  through  the 
poor  detentions  of  their  bad  do  ctrine,  to  cover  it  with 
blessed  confusion.  But  alas !  it  requires  but  a  yery 
little  of  genuine,  living  godliness  in  the  house,  to  bring- 
up  children  for  a  future  conversion  !  This  kind  of  os- 
trich nurture  can  be  cheaply  maintained,  and  with  a 
very  small  expenditure  of  piety.  To  keep  the  drill  on 
foot,  as  a  mere  legal  indoctrination ;  to  phrase  a  hope 
or  desire  of  conversion,  in  the  family  prayers ;  to  be 
exact,  stern,  stiff  in  all  church  practices,  requires  no 
fliith ;  or  living  by  faith,  no  sanctification  of  the  life. 
A  busy,  worldly,  hard-natured  father,  a  vain,  irritable, 
captious,  fashion-loving  mother,  a  house  orthodoxly 
bad  and  earthly  in  all  the  reigning  practices,  is  yet  a 


76  THE    OSTKICH    NURTURE. 

good  enough  scliool  to  prepare  the  necessity  of  a  future 
conversion  for  the  children !  How  different  the  kind 
of  life  that  is  necessary  to  bring  them  up  in  conversion 
and  beget  them  anew  in  the  spirit  of  a  loving  obedience 
to  God,  at  a  point  even  prior  to  all  definite  recollection. 
This  is  Christian  nurture,  because  it  nurtures  Christians, 
and  because  it  makes  an  element  of  Christian  grace  in 
the  house.  It  invites,  it  nourishes  hope,  it  breathes  in 
love,  it  forms  the  new  life  as  a  holy,  though  beautiful 
prejudice  in  the  soul,  before  its  opening  and  full  flower- 
ing of  intelligence  arrives.  "  Suffer  little  children  to 
come  unto  me  and  forbid  them  not"  translates  the  very 
economy  of  the  house,  and  has,  in  that  economy,  its 
living  verification.  And  the  promise,  "  for  of  such  is 
the  kingdom  of  heaven,"  wears  no  look  of  violence ; 
for  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  there.  The  children  grow 
up  in  it,  as  being  configured  to  it.  The  family  prayers 
have  a  sound  of  gladness,  and  they  sing  the  family 
hymn  with  glad  voices.  The  worldliness  of  the  glitter- 
ing bad  world  without  is  set  off  and  made  fascinating 
by  no  doom  of  repression  within.  A  firm  administra- 
tion is  loved  because,  like  Grod's,  it  is  felt  to  be  the  de- 
fense of  liberty.  Truth,  purity,  firmness,  love  to  Jesus, 
all  that  belongs  to  a  formal  conversion  and  more,  is 
centralized  thus  in  the  soul,  as  a  kind  of  ingrown  habit. 
The  children  are  all  converted  by  the  converting  ele- 
ment of  grace  they  live  in.  And  so  it  is  proved  that 
there  is  a  conversion  for  children,  proper  and  possible 
to  their  age.  They  are  not  excluded,  walled  away  from 
Christ  by  a  mechanical  enforcement  of  modes  proper 


THE    OSTRICH    NURTURE.  77 

only  and  possible  to  adults.     The  house  itself  is  a  con- 
verting ordinance. 

Again  there  is  another  and  different  way  in  which 
parents,  meaning  to  be  Christian,  fall  into  the  ostrich 
nurture  without  being  at  all  aware  of  it.  They  be- 
lieve in  what  are  called  revivals  of  religion,  and  have 
a  great  opinion  of  them  as  being,  in  a  very  special  sense, 
the  converting  times  of  the  gospel.  They  bring  np 
their  children,  therefore,  not  for  conversion  exactly,  but, 
what  is  less  dogmatic  and  formal,  for  the  converting 
times.  And  this  they  think  is  even  more  evangelical 
and  spiritual  because  it  is  more  practical;  though,  in 
fact,  much  looser  and  connected,  commonly,  with  even 
greater  defections  from  parental  duty  and  fidelity.  To 
bring  up  a  family  for  revivals  of  religion  requires,  alas  ! 
about  the  smallest  possible  amount  of  consistency  and 
Christian  assiduity.  No  matter  what  opinion  may  be 
held  of  such  times,  or  of  their  inherent  value  and  pro- 
priety as  pertaining  to  the  genuine  economy  of  the 
gospel,  any  one  can  see  that  Christian  parents  may  very 
easily  roll  off  a  great  part  of  their  responsibilities,  and 
comf(5rt  themselves  in  utter  vanity  and  worldliness  of 
life,  by  just  holding  it  as  a  principal  hope  for  their  chil- 
dren, that  they  are  to  be  finally  taken  np  and  rescued 
from  sin,  by  revivals  of  religion.  As  it  costs  much  to 
be  steadily  and  uniformly  spiritual,  how  agreeable  the 
hope  that  gales  of  the  Spirit  will  come  to  make  amends 
for  their  conscious  defections.  If  they  do  not  maintain 
the  unworldly  and  heavenly  spirit,  so  as  to  make  it  the 


78  THE    OSTRICH    NURTURE. 

element  of  life  in  their  house,  God  will  some"  time  have 
his  day  of  power  in  the  community,  and  they  piously 
hope  that  tbeir  children  will  then  be  converted  to 
Christ.  So  they  fall  into  a  key  of  expectation  that  per- 
mits, for  the  present,  modes  of  life  and  conduct,  which 
they  can  not  quite  approve.  They  go  after  the  world 
with  an  eagerness  which  they  expect  by  and  by  to 
check,  or  possibly,  for  the  time,  to  repent  of.  The 
family  prayers  grow  cold  and  formal,  and  are  often  in- 
termitted. The  tempers  are  earthly,  coarse,  violent. 
Discipline  is  ministered  in  anger,  not  in  love.  The 
children  are  lectured,  scolded,  scorched  by  fiery  words. 
The  plans  are  all  for  money,  show,  position,  not  for  the 
more  sacred  and  higher  interests  of  character.  The 
conversation  is  uncharitable,  harsh,  malignant,  an  effu- 
sion of  spleen,  a  tirade,  a  taking  down  of  supposed 
worth  and  character  by  low  imputations  and  carping 
criticisms.  In  this  kind  of  element  the  children  are  to 
have  their  growth  and  nurture,  but  the  parents  piously 
hope  that  there  will  some  time  be  a  revival  of  religion, 
and  that  so  Grod  will  mercifally  make  up  what  they 
conceive  to  be  only  the  natural  infirmity  of  their  lives. 
Finally  the  hoped  for  day  arrives,  and  there  begins  to 
be  a  remarkable  and  strange  piety  in  the  house. 
The  father  choakes  almost  in  his  prayer,  showing  that 
he  really  prays  with  a  meaning!  The  mother,  con- 
scious that  things  have  not  been  going  rightly  with  the 
children,  and  seeing  many  frightful  signs  of  their  cer- 
tain ruin  at  hand,  warns  them,  even  weeping,  of  the 
impending  dangers  by  which  she  is  so  greatly  distressed 


THE    OSTRICH    NURTURE.  79 

on  their  account ;  adding  also  bitter  confessions  of  fault 
in  herself.  The  children  stare  of  course,  not  knowinjB^ 
what  strange  thing  has  come !  They  can  not  be  unaf- 
fected ;  perhaps  they  seem  to  be  converted,  perhaps  not. 
In  many  cases  it  piakes  little  difference  which ;  for  if  all 
this  new  piety  in  the  house  is  to  burn  out  in  a  few  days, 
and  the  old  regimen  of  worldliness  and  sin  to  return, 
it  will  be  wonderful  if  they  are  not  converted  back 
again  to  be  only  just  as  neglectful,  in  the  matter  of 
Christian  living,  as  they  were  brought  up  to  be.  Any 
scheme  of  nurture  that  brings  up  children  thus  for  revi- 
vals of  religion,  is  a  virtual  abuse  and  cruelty.  And 
it  is  none  the  less  cruel  that  some  pious-looking  pretexts 
are  cunningly  blended  with  it.  Instead  of  that  steady, 
formative,  new-creating  power  that  ought  to  be  exerted 
by  holiness  in  the  house,  it  looks  to  campaigns  of  force 
that  really  dispense  with  holiness,  and  it  results  that  all 
the  best  ends  of  Christian  nurture  are  practically  lost. 

Again,  there  is  another  form  of  the  unchristian  nur- 
ture, over  opposite  to  these  just  named,  which  is  quite 
as  wide  of  the  true  character.  I  speak  of  that  lower  and 
merely  ethical  nurture,  which  undertakes,  with  great 
assiduity  it  may  be,  to  form  and  whittle  the  age  of 
childhood  into  character,  by  a  merely  pruning  and  hu- 
manly culturing  process.  It  is  a  kind  of  nurture  that 
stops  short  of  religion,  and  atones  for  the  conscious 
defect,  by  a  drill  more  or  less  careful  in  the  moralities. 
The  reason  of  this  defect  commonly  is  that  the  parents 
are  too  far  decayed  in  piety  and  too  much  under  the 


80  THE    OSTRICH    NURTURE. 

world,  to  put  forth  any  really  religious  endeavor ;  but 
it  is  to  their  children  as  if  no  such  interest  of  religion 
had  existence.  They  are  corrected  on  this  side  and  on 
that,  by  human  standards  and  methods,  taught  to  con- 
sider what  is  respectable,  or  what  people  will  think  of 
them,  how  to  win  the  honors  of  character  among  men, 
lectured  on  the  wisdom  of  conduct,  and  the  resulting 
happiness  of  a  right  behavior,  but  the  fact  of  their  rela- 
tion to  God,  and  the  standards  and  motives  furnished 
by  religion  are  wholly  passed  by,  or  omitted.  The 
cruelty  of  this  sort  of  nurture  is  that,  however  delicate 
and  careful  it  may  be  of  that  which  lies  in  mere  social 
character  and  standing,  it  exactly  copies  the  ostrich 
nurture  in  all  that  relates  to  the  higher  and  properly 
religious  life.  The  world- ward  nature  is  cared  for,  but 
the  religious,  that  whict  opens  God-ward,  that  which 
aspires  after  God,  and,  occupied  by  his  inspiring  im- 
pulse, mounts  into  all  good  character,-  as  being  even 
liberty  itself;  that  which  consummates  and  crowns  the 
real  greatness  and  future  eternity  of  souls,  is  virtually 
ignored,  left  to  the  wild,  dry,  motherhood  of  the 
sands. 

Children  trained  in  this  mere  ethical  nurture,  are  in- 
ducted into  no  way  of  faith  or  dependence  on  God. 
They  are  taught  to  look  for  no  spiritual  transformation. 
The  virtue  they  practice  is  to  be  prayerless  virtue. 
They  grow  up  thus  on  the  roots  of  their  natural  pride 
and  selfishness,  bred  into  the  habit  of  testing  their  good- 
ness by  their  appearances,  and  their  merit  by  their 
works.     That  they  should  be  molded  in  this  manner  to 


THE    OSTRICH    NURTURE.  ,81 

a  Christian  life  would  be  wonderful.  Their  parents 
may  be  nominally  Christian,  but  they  have,  in  fact, 
agreed  to  omit  religion  in  the  training  of  their  children  ; 
and  it  would  be  strange  if  they  should  compliment  their 
only  nominally  Christian  parentage,  by  unfolding  a 
really  Christian  life.  It  will  be  well  if  they  have  any 
genuine  respect  for  religion,  or  even  sense  of  what  it  is. 
Trained  to  have  no  religious  conscience,  arid  to  prac- 
tice a  virtue  unblessed  by  the  nobler  impulsions  of  relig- 
ious inspiration,  it  will  be  strange  if  they  maintain 
even  correctness  of  life ;  and  more  so  if  their  heart,  un- 
developed by  religion,  does  not  canker  itself  away  in 
the  sordid  vices  of  meanness,  or  burn  itself  out,  as  re- 
gards all  worthy  and  great  feelings,  in  the  general  hatred 
of  God  and  his  truth.  There  may  be  many  decencies,  or 
even  delicacies,  in  this  kind  of  nurture  ;  and  yet,  in  the 
complete  oversight  or  neglect  of  the  religious  nature,  it 
becomes  profoundly  and  even  cruelly  unnatural. 

There  is  yet  another  and  widely  prevalent  miscon- 
ception of  childhood  which,  to  a  certain  extent,  involves 
Christianity  itself  in  the  same  unnatural  methods  that 
are  adopted  by  men.  I  speak  here  more  especially  of 
the  assumed  fact  that  Christ  allows  no  place  in  the  church 
for  such  as  are  only  children.  Is  not  the  church  to  be 
composed  of  such  as  really  believe  ?  And  what  kind 
of  faith  can  children  have  who  are  not  yet  arrived  at 
the  age  of  intelligence?  Hence  there  is  supposed  to 
be  a  kind  of  necessity  that  children,  up  to  that  period 
of  advancement  and  personal  maturity  when  they  are 


82  THE    OSTRICH    NURTURE. 

able  to  choose  and  believe  for  themselves,  and  become 
the  subjects  of  a  genuine  Christian  experience,  should 
be  excluded  from  the  Christian  church.  It  signifies 
nothing  that  the  seal  of  faith  was  anciently  applied  to 
children  only  eight  days  old,  as  being  presumptively  in 
the  faith  of  their  parents,  and  included  with  them  in 
the  bonds  of  their  covenant.  As  little  does  it  signify 
that  Christ  says  "let  them  come,  forbid  them  not;  for 
of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven."  Still  they  can  not 
believe — are  not  old  enough  to  believe — how  then  can 
they  come  into  the  church,  or  in  any  conceivable  way 
be  included  in  it  ?  Is  not  the  church  of  God  assumed 
to  be  made  up  of  them  that  believe  ?  What  then  is 
left  for  children  but  to  stay  without  till  they  are  old 
enough  to  be  intelligently  converted,  and  entered  into  a 
new  life  by  their  own  deliberate  choice  ?  Hence  the 
JBaptist  brethren  conceive  it  to  be  a  matter  perfectly 
final,  as  regards  the  question  of  baptism,  that  infants 
can  not  believe,  and  can  not  therefore  have  any  fit  place 
among  believers  in  the  church.  Does  not  the  Scripture 
say — "  Believe  and  be  baptized  ?"  And  how  is  confes- 
sion to  be  made  with  the  mouth,  except  when  the  heart 
belie veth  unto  righteousness  ? 

The  result  of  such  arguments  and  inferences  is,  that 
children  have  no  place  given  them  in  the  church,  how- 
ever modified,  to  suit  the  conditions  of  their  age.  Their 
parents  are  called  by  Christ  to  live  within  and  they 
themselves  are  left  without.  There  is  no  church  nur- 
ture for  them  proper  to  their  tender  years ;  they  can  not 
be  in  the  church  till  they  are  sufficiently  grown  to  be- 


THE     OSTRICH     NURTURE.  83 

lieve.  And  so  it  is  settled  tliat  there  is  no  cliurcli  mercy 
for  tliem.  The  church  tarns  her  back  and  leaves  them, 
separated  even  from  their  parents,  to  try  their  fortunes, 
like  the  wild  ostriches,  in  the  desert  sands  without. 

It  would  seem  that  the  hardness  and  the  monstrous 
unnaturalness  of  such  conceptions  must  revolt  the  mind 
of  almost  any  thoughtful  person.  If  the  grace  of  our 
salvation  took  the  ingenuous  children  away  from  their 
sinning,  unbelieving  parents,  and  gathered  them  into 
the  heavenly  fold  by  themselves,  we  should  have  less 
reason  to  be  shocked  by  the  severity.  But  instead  of 
this,  calling  home  the  penitent  fathers  and  mothers  and 
carefully  folding  them  in  the  church  of  God's  protec- 
tion, Jesus  their  shepherd  shuts  away  the  lambs,  we 
are  told,  and  forbids  them  to  come  in !  The  cruelty  of 
such  an  opinion,  or  doctrine,  is  evident,  and  the  cruel 
effects  it  must  have,  in  making  even  childhood  feel 
itself  to  be  an  alien  from  God's  mercies,  are  even  more 
so.  It  has  no  conception  that  there  can  be  a  Saviour 
and  salvation  for  all  ages  and  stages  of  life ;  Christ  is 
the  Saviour  of  adults  only !  No !  Christ  is  a  Saviour 
bounded  by  no  such  narrow  and  meager  theories — a 
Saviour  for  infants,  and  children,  and  youth,  as  truly  as 
for  the  adult  age;  gathering  them  all  into  his  fold 
together,  there  to  be  kept  and  nourished  together,  by 
gifts  appropriate  to  their  years ;  even  as  he  himself  has 
shown  us  so  convincingly,  by  passing  through  all  ages 
and  stages  of  life  himself,  and  giving  us,  in  that  manner, 
to  see  that  he  partakes  the  want  and  joins  himself  to 
the  fallen  state  of  each.     Having  been  a  child  himself, 


84  THE    OSTRICH    NURTUKE. 

who  can  imagine,  even  for  one  moment,  that  he  has  no 
place  in  his  fold  for  the  fit  reception  of  childhood  ? 
Dreadful  insult,  both  to  him  and  to  childhood,  and  the 
greater  insult,  that  the  gospel  even  of  heaven's  love  is 
narrowed  to  this,  by  a  supposed  necessity  of  evangel- 
ism !  What  a  position  is  given  thus  to  children,  grow- 
ing up  to  look  on  an  adult  church,  instructed  into  the 
opinion  that  what  they  look  upon — Christ,  ordinances, 
covenant  vows — is  only  for  adult  people  ! 

I  ought  perhaps  to  add,  in  bringing  this  argument  to 
a  close,  that  the  harsh  imputations  I  may  seem  to  some 
of  you  to  have  indulged,  must  not  be  hastily  disallowed. 
Almost  all  parents  are  tender,  consciously  tender  of 
their  children.  What  will  not  most  of  you  do,  to  clothe 
and  feed,  and  educate,  and,  in  all  respects,  make  due 
provision  for  your  children  ?  Sacrifices  here  are  noth- 
ing. Health,  rest,  ease,  comfort,  you  gladly  renounce 
for  their  sake,  and  some  of  you  would  not  spare  the 
sacrifice  even  of  your  soul  to  serve  them.  Are  you 
then  to  be  justly  charged  with  a  mode  of  nurture  so 
unnatural  as  to  be  fitly  resembled  to  that  of  the  os- 
triches ?  Of  what  are  you  more  deeply  conscious  than 
of  your  willingness  even  to  die  for  your  children.  All 
your  tenderest  movings  are  toward  them ;  all  that  you 
plan,  or  think,  or  do,  is  for  them.  Yes,  doubtless,  it  is 
even  so,  as  regards  their  nurture  and  comfort  in  this 
world — all  your  tenderest  cares  and  studies  center  here. 
Of  this  there  is  no  question,  and  far  be  it  from  me  to 
suggest  a  doubt  of  you  here. 


THE     OSTRICH    NURTURE.  85 

No,  this  defection  from  nature,  of  which  I  have  been 
speaking,  relates  to  a  different  matter — in  quite  another 
field.  Doing  your  full  honor  as  a  careful  provider,  a 
most  faithful  and  loving  guardian,  a  disinterested,  self- 
sacrificing  contriver  and  laborer  for  your  children's 
good,  the  question  is  whether  you  do  not  after  all  put 
them  off  with  a  mere  ostrich  nurture  in  the  matter  of 
the  soul  ?  whether  you  do  not  let  in  some  one  or 
more  of  these  very  misconceptions  I  have  named,  to 
control  all  your  modes  of  conduct  and  discipline  to- 
ward them  ?  Do  you  never  throw  off  your  own  Chris- 
tian responsibilities  for  them  by  allowing,  as  a  pretext, 
the  fact  of  their  liberty  and  personal  responsibility  for 
themselves  ?  Are  you  never  let  down  in  the  sense  of 
your  most  sacred  obligations,  by  simply  allowing  your- 
self to  think  it  enough,  that  your  children  are  brought 
up  for  conversion  ?  Do  none  of  you  subside  even  to  a 
lower  point,  and  bring  up  your  children  only  for  revi- 
vals of  religion  ?  Are  there  none  of  you  that  make  it 
your  whole  care  to  form  your  children  by  the  mere 
ethical  standards,  and  finish  them  in  the  graces  of  a 
mere  human  culture  ?  Have  none  of  you  theories  of 
salvation  and  of  Christ's  way  respecting  it,  such  as  leave 
no  place  for  children  in  the  church,  however  qualified 
to  meet  their  age  ?  Little  now  does  it  signify  that  you 
love  your  children,  or  do  even  slave  both  body  and 
mind  to  get  a  footing  of  society  and  comfort  for  them 
in  this  life — even  beavers  and  bears  will  do  as  much  as 
that.  In  giving  existence  to  your  child  you  have  set 
him  forth  into  perils  that  include  his  immortality,  and 


86  THE    OSTRICH    NURTURE. 

jou  have  therefore  no  right  to  handle  him  neglectfully 
in  this  great  concern.    On  the  contrary,  you  are  to  accept 
his  immortality,    and  in  a  seriously   Christian  sense, 
take  it  on  yourself,  as  being  in  Christ's  name  responsi- 
ble for  it ;  responsible,  that  is,  for  making  your  house 
itself  such  an  element  of  piety,  love,  faith,  unworldly 
and  beautiful  living,  that  your  children  shall  grow  up 
in  it,  as  in  the  nurture  of  the  Lord.     Take  no  credit  to 
yourselves   for   any  thing  which   falls   short  of  this. 
You  may  be  very  tender  in  what  falls  short,  but  it  is 
no  Christian  tenderness.     You  can  not  live  in  a  worldly 
house,  you  can  not  make  yourself  a  family  drudge  to 
serve  a  mere  family  ambition,  can  not  piously  hope  that 
God   will  somehow  convert  your  children  after  they 
have  got  by  you  and  become  adults,  without  being 
justly  chargeable  with  giving  their  souls  a  mere  nur- 
ture of  the  sands,  in  which  the  genuine  Christian  grace 
has  no  part  whatever.     And  be  not  surprised  if  these 
children  when  they  meet  you  before  the  Judge  of  your 
and  their  life,  have  a  more  severe  witness  to  give  against 
you  than  if  you  had  merely  neglected  their  bodies. 

Probably  enough  there  may  be  some  of  you  that, 
without  being  Christians  yourselves,  are  yet  careful  to 
teach  your  children  all  the  saving  truths  of  religion, 
and  who  thus  may  take  it  as  undue  severity  to  be 
charged  with  only  giving  your  children  this  unnatural, 
ostrich  nurture  of  which  I  have  spoken.  But  how 
poor  a  teacher  of  Christ  is  any  one  who  is  not  in  the 
light  of  Christ,  and  does  not  know  the  inward  power 
of  his  truth,  as   a  gospel   of  life  to  the  soul.     You 


THE     OSTRICH     NURTURE.  87 

press  your  child,  in  this  manner,  with  duties  you 
do  not  practice,  and  promises  you  do  not  embrace; 
and  if  you  do  not  succeed,  it  only  means  that  you  can 
not  impose  on  him  to  that  high  extent.  A  mother 
teach  by  words  only  ?  No !  but  more,  a  great  deal 
more  by  the  atmosphere  of  love  and  patience  she 
breathes.  Besides,  how  easy  is  it  for  her  to  make  every 
thing  she  teaches  legal  and  repulsive,  just  because 
she  has  no  liberty  or  joy  in  it  herself.  What  is  wanted 
therefore  is  not  merely  to  give  a  child  the  law,  telling 
him  this  is  duty,  this  is  right,  this  God  requires,  this  he 
will  punish,  but  a  much  greater  want  is  to  have  the 
spirit  of  all  duty  lived  and  breathed  around  him ;  to 
see,  and  feel,  and  breathe,  himself,  the  living  atmos- 
phere of  grace.  Therefore  it  is  vain,  let  all  parents  so 
understand,  to  imagine  that  you  can  really  fulfill  the 
true  fatherhood  and  motherhood,  unless  you  are  true 
Christians  yourselves.  I  am  sorry  to  discourage  you 
in  any  good  attempts.  Kightly  taken,  what  I  say  will 
not  discourage  you,  but  will  only  prompt  you  by  all 
that  is  dearest  to  you  on  earth,  to  become  truly  quali- 
fied for  your  office.  By  these  dear  pledges  God  has 
given  you,  to  call  you  to  himself,  I  beseech  you  turn 
yourselves  to  the  true  life  of  religion.  Have  it  first  in 
yourselves,  then  teach  it  as  you  live  it ;  teach  it  by 
living  it ;  for  you  can  do  it  in  no  other  manner.  Be 
Christians  yourselves,  and  then  it  will  not  be  difficult 
for  you  to  do  your  true  duties  to  your  children.  Until 
then  it  is  really  impossible. 


88  THE    OSTRICH    NURTURE. 

I  have  only  to  add  in  the  conclusion  of  this  subject — 
just  what  is  made  plain  by  it — that  there  is  really  no 
great  wonder,  in  the  fact  often  spoken  of  as  a  subject 
of  wonder,  that  Christian  parents  are  so  frequently 
disappointed  in  their  children.  Why  is  it  that  such 
correct  and  apparently  Christian  people  see  their  chil- 
dren grow  up  unaffected  by  religion,  or  even  hostile  to 
its  sacred  claims,  falling  possibly  into  a  character  of 
vice  and  complete  moral  abandonment  ?  The  answer 
is,  alas !  too  easy.  I  will  not  say  that,  in  every  case, 
the  result  accuses  them  of  crime ;  it  may  be  the  effect 
sometimes  of  their  mistaken,  or  faulty  conceptions  of 
parental  duty.  But  no  one,  it  seems  to  me,  can  once 
distinguish  these  bad  faults  of  nurture,  and  note  the 
very  wide  prevalence  they  have  in  the  Christian  homes, 
without  even  expecting  worse  and  more  fatal  results 
of  mischief  than  actually  appear.  Sometimes  it  seems 
to  be  imagined  that  nothing  but  some  dark  hindrance 
of  divine  sovereignty  can  account  for  such  results. 
The  less  we  have  to  say  in  that  strain  the  wiser  we 
shall  be,  and  as  much  less  irreverent  to  God.  No, 
there  is  reason  enough  for  all  such  miscarriages  without 
charging  them  to  God.  I  could  not  express  myself  as 
the  truth  requires,  my  brethren,  if  I  did  not  say,  that 
when  I  observe  the  wide-spread  delusions  of  nom- 
inally Christian  parents,  their  false  aims,  their  worldly 
pretexts,  their  habitual  separation  from  any  living  faith 
in  God,  in  the  ends,  plans,  practices,  and  spirit  of  their 
administration,  I  rather  wonder  that  results  a  great 
deal   worse   do   not  appear.     It  would  even  be  a  fit 


THE     OSTRICH    NURTURE.  89 

subject  of  wonder,  if  children  trained  in  this  manner, 
should  not  turn  out  badly.  If  indeed  they  are  so  much 
as  converted  afterwards,  saying  nothing  of  their  grow- 
ing np  in  a  sanctified  character,  it  is  well — more  than- 
could  be  rightly  expected. 

No,  my  friends,  these  mistaken  modes  of  nurture  ought 
not  to  make  Christians;  they  must  even  falsify  their 
own  nature  to  do  it.  Let  us  be  just  to  God,  and  lay 
our  griefs  no  longer  to  his  charge.  If  we  can  not  come 
into  his  way  in  the  training  of  our  families,  let  us  not 
complain  that  we  do  not  succeed  in  ways  of  our  own. 
After  all,  there  is  no  cheap  way  of  making  Christians 
of  our  children.  Nothing  but  to  practically  live  for  it 
makes  it  sure.  To  be  Christians  ourselves — ah  !  there 
is  the  difficulty.  How  can  an  unchristian,  or  only  non- 
christian  spirit  reigning  in  the  house,  quicken  the  spirit 
of  life  and  holiness  in  the  hearts  subjected  to  its  sway  ? 
Even  if  our  false  modes  of  nurture  are  mistakes,  who 
can  expect  that  mistakes  will  be  as  good  as  verities? 
O,  thou,  blessed  Son  of  God,  advocate  and  friend  of  the 
little  ones,  rid  us  of  our  falsities,  and  set  us  in  thy  own 
true  spirit,  that  we  may  fitly  discharge  these  most 
sacred  and  tenderest  duties ! 


IV. 


THE  ORGANIC  UNITY  OF  THE  FAMILY. 

"  The  children  gather  wood,  and  the  fathers  kindle  the  fire,  and  the 
women  knead  dough,  to  make  cakes  to  the  queen  of  heaven,  and  to  pour 
out  drink  offerings  unto  other  gods,  that  they  may  provoke  me  to  anger." 
— Jereviiah  vii.  18. 

In  this  lively  picture,  you  have  the  illustration  of  a 
great  and  momentous  truth — the  Organic  Unity  of  the 
Family.  If  it  be  an  idolatrous  family,  worshipers  of 
the  moon,  for  example,  such  is  the  organic  relation 
of  the  members,  that  they  are  all  involved  together, 
and  the  idol  worship  is  the  common  act  of  the  house. 
The  children  gather  wood,  the  fathers  kindle  the  fire, 
the  women  prepare  the  cakes  for  an  offering,  and  the 
queen  of  heaven  receives  it,  as  one  that  is  the  joint 
product  of  the  whole  family.  The  worship  is  family 
worship ;  the  god  of  one  is  the  god  of  all ;  the  spirit 
of  one,  the  spirit  of  all. 

And  so  it  is  with  all  family  transactions  and  feelings. 
They  implicate  ordinarily  the  whole  circle  of  the  house, 
young  and  old,  male  and  female,  fathers  and  mothers, 
sons  and  daughters.  Acting  thus  together,  they  take 
a  common  character,  accept  the  same  delusions,  prac- 
tice the  same  sins,  and  ought,  I  believe,  to  be  sanctified 
by  a  common  grace. 

This  most  serious  truth  is  one  that  is  exceedingly 


THE    ORGANIC    UNITY.  91 

remote  from  tlie  present  age,  and  from  no  part  of  the 
Christian  world  more  remote  than  from  ns.  All  our 
modern  notions  and  speculations  have  taken  a  bent 
toward  individualism.  In  the  state,  we  have  been 
engaged  to  bring  out  the  civil  rights  of  the  individual, 
asserting  his  proper  liberties  as  a  person,  and  vindica- 
ting his  conscience,  as  a  subject  of  God,  from  the 
constraints  of  force.  In  matters  of  religion,  we  have 
burst  the  bonds  of  church  authority,  and  erected  the  in- 
dividual mind  into  a  tribunal  of  judgment  within  itself; 
we  have  asserted  free  will  as  the  ground  of  all  proper 
responsibility,  and  framed  our  theories  of  religion  so  as 
to  justify  the  incommunicable  nature  of  persons  as 
distinct  units.  While  thus  engaged,  we  have  well  nigh 
lost,  as  was  to  be  expected,  the  idea  of  organic  powers 
and  relations.  The  state,  the  church,  the  family,  have 
ceased  to  be  regarded  as  such,  according  to  their  proper 
idea,  and  become  mere  collections  of  units.  A  national 
life,  a  church  life,  a  family  life,  is  no  longer  conceived, 
or  perhaps  conceivable,  by  many.  Instead  of  being 
wrought  in  together  and  penetrated,  to  some  extent,  by 
historic  laws  and  forces  common  to  all  the  members, 
we  only  seem  to  lie  as  seeds  piled  together,  without 
any  terms  of  connection,  save  the  accident  of  proximity, 
or  the  fact  that  we  all  belong  to  the  heap.  And  thus 
the  three  great  forms  of  organic  existence,  which  God 
has  appointed  for  the  race,  are  in  fact  lost  out  of  mental 
recognition.  The  conception  is  so  far  gone  that,  when 
the  fact  of  such  an  organic  relation  is  asserted,  our 
enlightened   public  will  stare  at  the  strange  conceit. 


92  THE    ORGANIC     UNITY 

and   wonder  what  can  be   meant  by   a  paradox  so 
absurd. 

My  design,  at  tlie  present  time,  is  to  restore,  if  pos- 
sible, the  conception  of  one  of  these  organic  forms, 
viz :  the  family.  For  though  we  have  gained  immense 
advantages,  in  a  civil,  ecclesiastical,  and  religions  point 
of  view,  by  our  modern  development  of  individualism, 
we  have  yet  run  ourselves  into  many  hurtful  misappre- 
hensions on  all  these  subjects,  which,  if  they  are  not 
rectified,  will  assuredly  bring  disastrous  consequences. 
And  no  where  consequences  more  disastrous  than  in 
the  family,  where  they  are  already  apparent,  though 
not  fully  matured ;  for  the  very  change  of  view,  by 
which  we  have  cleared  individual  responsibility,  in  our 
discussions  of  free  will,  original  sin,  and  kindred  sub- 
jects, has  operated,  in  another  direction,  to  diminish 
responsibility,  where  most  especially  it  needs  to  be  felt ; 
that  is,  in  Christian  families. 

What  then  do  we  mean  by  the  organic  unity  of  the 
family  ?  It  will  be  understood,  of  course,  that  we  do 
not  speak  of  a  physical  or  vascular  connection ;  for,  after 
birth,  there  is  no  such  connection  existing,  any  more 
than  there  is  between  persons  of  different  famihes.  In 
so  far,  however,  as  a  connection  of  parentage,  or  deriva- 
tion has  affected  the  character,  that  fact  must  be  in- 
cluded, though  it  can  not  be  regarded  as  a  chief  element 
in  the  unity  asserted.  Perhaps  I  shall  be  "understood 
with  the  greatest  facility,  if  I  say  that  the  family  is  such 
a  body,  that  a  power  over  character  is  exerted  thereii)^ 


OF    THE     FAMILY.  93 

which  can  not  properly  he  called  influence.  "We  com- 
monly use  tlie  term  influence  to  denote  a  persuasive 
power,  or  a  governmental  power,  exerted  purposely, 
and  with  a  conscious  design  to  effect  some  result  in  the 
subject.  In  maintaining  the  organic  unity  of  the  family, 
I  mean  to  assert,  that  a  power  is  exerted  by  parents 
over  children,  not  only  when  they  teach,  encourage, 
persuade,  and  govern,  but  without  any  purposed  control 
whatever.  The  bond  is  so  intimate  that  they  do  it 
unconsciously  and  undesignedly — they  must  do  it. 
Their  character,  feelings,  spirit,  and  principles,  must 
propagate  themselves,  whether  they  will  or  not.  How- 
ever, as  influence,  in  the  sense  just  given,  can  not  be 
received  by  childhood  prior  to  the  age  of  reason  and 
deliberative  choice,  the  control  of  parents,  purposely 
exerted,  must  be  regarded,  during  that  early  period,  as 
an  absolute  force,  not  as  influence.  All  such  acts 
of  control  therefore  must,  in  metaphysical  propriety, 
and  as  far  as  the  child  is  concerned,  be  classed  under 
the  general  denomination  of  organic  causes.  And  thus 
whatever  power  over  character  is  exerted  in  families 
one  side  of  consent,  in  the  children,  and  even  before 
they  have  come  to  the  age  of  rational  choice,  must  be 
taken  as  organic  power,  in  the  same  way  as  if  the  effect 
accrued  under  the  law  of  simple  contagion.  So  too 
when  the  child  performs  acts  of  will,  under  parental 
direction,  that  involve  results  of  character,  without 
knowing  or  considering  that  they  do,  these  must  be 
classed  in  the  same  manner. 

In  general,  then^  we  find  the  organic  unity  of  the 


94  THE    ORGANIC    UNITY 

family,  in  every  exertion  of  power  over  cliaracter, 
wliich  is  not  exerted  and  received  as  influence  ;  tliat  is, 
with  a  design  to  address  tlie  choice  on  one  side,  and  a 
sense  of  responsible  choice  on  the  other.  Or,  to  use 
language  more  popular,  we  conceive  the  manners,  per- 
sonal views,  prejudices,  practical  motives,  and  spirit 
of  the  house,  as  an  atmosphere  which  passes  into  all 
and  pervades  all,  as  naturally  as  the  air  they  breathe. 
This,  however,  not  in  any  such  absolute  or  complete 
sense  as  to  leave  no  room  for  individual  distinctions. 
Sometimes  the  two  parents  will  have  a  very  different 
spirit  themselves,  though  the  grace  of  God  is  pledged 
to  make  the  better,  if  it  be  truly  right,  and  hindered  by 
no  gross  inconsistencies,  victorious.  Sometimes  the 
child,  passing  into  the  sphere  of  other  causes,  as  in  the 
school,  the  church,  neighboring  families,  or  general 
society,  will  emerge  and  take  a  character  partially  dis- 
tinct— ^partially,  I  say ;  never  wholly.  The  odor  of  the 
house  will  always  be  in  his  garments,  and  the  internal 
difficulties  with  which  he  has  to  struggle,  will  spring 
of  the  family  seeds  planted  in  his  nature. 

Having  carefully  stated  thus  what  I  mean  by  the 
organic  unity  of  the  family,  I  next  proceed  to  inquire 
whether  any  such  unity  exists  ?  And  here  it  is  worth 
noticins; — 

1.  That  there  is  nothing  in  this  view  which  conflicts 
with  the  proper  individuality  of  persons  and  their 
separate  responsibility.  We  have  gained  immense  ad- 
vantages, in  modern  times,  as  regards  society,  govern- 


OF    THE     FAMILY.  95 

mcnt,  and  character,  by  liberating  and  exalting  the 
individual  man.  Far  be  it  from  mc  to  underrate  these 
advantages,  or  to  bring  them  into  jeopardy.  But  a 
child  manifestly  can  not  be  a  proper  individual,  before 
he  is  one.  Nothing  can  be  gained  by  assuming  that  he 
is ;  and,  if  it  is  not  true,  much  is  sure  to  be  lost.  Be- 
sides, we  are  never,  at  any  age,  so  completely  individ- 
ual as  to  be  clear  of  organic  connections  that  affect  our 
character.  To  a  certain  extent  and  for  certain  pur- 
poses, we  are  individuals,  acting  each  from  his  own 
will.  Then  to  a  certain  extent  and  for  certain  other 
purposes,  we  are  parts  or  members  of  a  common  body, 
as  truly  as  the  limbs  of  a  tree.  We  have  an  open 
side  in  our  nature,  where  a  common  feeling  enters, 
where  we  adhere,  and  through  which  we  are  actua- 
ted by  a  common  will.  There  we  are  many — here  we 
are  one. 

It  is  remarkable  too  how  often,  without  knowing  it, 
and,  as  it  were  instinctively,  we  assume  the  fact,  and 
act  upon  it.  We  do  it,  for  example,  as  between  na- 
tions, where  jt  is  not  so  much  the  moral  life  as  the 
national  that  constructs  the  supposed  unity.  One  na- 
tion, for  instance,  has  injured  or  oppressed  another — 
sought  to  crush,  or  actually  crushed  another  by  inva- 
sion. A  century  or  more  afterwards,  the  wrong  is 
remembered,  and  the  injured  nation  takes  the  field,  still 
burning  for  redress.  The  history  of  Carthage  and 
Rome  gives  us  an  example.  But,  suppose  it  had  been 
said^''  This  is  very  absurd  in  you  Carthaginians.  The 
Romans,  who  did  you  the  injury,   are  all  dead,  and 


96  THE     ORGANIC     UNITY 

those  who  now  bear  the  name  are  their  children's  chil- 
dren. They  have  done  you  no  injury  any  more  than 
the  people  of  Britain  or  India.  Neither  is  it  the  walls, 
or  streets,  or  temples  of  Rome  that  have  injured  you. 
The  Roman  territory  is  mere  land,  and  this  has  not 
injured  you.  Why  then  go  to  war  with  the  Romans  ? 
How  absurd  to  think  of  redressing  your  old  injuries  by 
a  war  with  men  who  have  done  you  no  harm!"  Now, 
it  was  by  just  this  kind  of  sophistry  that  Mr.  Jefferson 
proved  that  a  public  debt  is  obligatory  for  only  one 
generation,  and  possibly  the  Carthaginians  might  have 
been  speculatively  stumbled  by  such  reasonings.  Still, 
they  could  not  have  been  quite  satisfied,  I  think,  of 
their  validity.  Against  all  speculation,  they  would 
still  have  felt  that  the  proposed  war  was  somehow 
reconcilable  with  reason.  The  question  is  not  whether, 
on  Christian  principles,  they  were  right,  but  whether,  on 
natural  principles,  they  were  absurd.  This  probably 
no  reader  of  the  history  has  ever  felt.  For,  whether  it 
squares  with  our  speculative  notions  or  not,  we  do  all 
tacitly  assume  the  organic  unity  of  nations.  The  past 
we  behold,  living  in  the  present,  and  all  together  we 
regard  as  one,  inhabited  by  the  common  life.  How 
much  more  true  is  this  (though  in  a  different  way)  in 
families,  where  the  common  life  is  so  nearly  absolute 
over  the  members ;  where  they  are  all  inclosed  within 
the  four  walls  of  their  dwellings,  partakers  in  a  com- 
mon blood,  in  common  interests,  wants,  feelings,  and 
principles. 

2.  We  discover  the  organic  unity  of  families,  in  the 


OF    THE     FAMILY.  97 

fact  that  one  generation  is  the  natural  offspring  of  an- 
other. And  so  much  is  there  in  this,  that  the  children 
almost  always  betray  their  origin  in  their  looks  and 
features.  The  stamp  of  a  common  nature  is  on  them, 
revealed  in  the  stature,  complexion,  gait,  form,  and 
dispositions.  Sometimes  we  seem  to  see  remarkable 
exceptions.  But,  in  such  cases,  we  should  commonly 
find,  if  we  could  bring  up  to  view  the  ancestors  of  remo- 
ter generations,  that  the  family  bond  is  still  perpetuated, 
only  by  a  wider  reach  of  connection.  There  are  said  to 
be  two  maiden  sisters,  the  last  of  a  distinguished  family, 
now  living  in  England,  who,  having  no  resemblance  to 
any  near  ancestor,  have  yet  a  very  striking  resem- 
blance to  the  portrait,  still  hanging  in  the  family 
mansion,  of  an  ancestor  seven  generations  back.  In- 
deed, I  have  myself  distinguished,  by  their  looks,  the 
relationship  of  two  persons,  connected  by  a  common 
derivation  eight  generations  back,  and  who  more  closely 
resembled  each  other  in  their  persons,  than  either  his 
nearest  kindred.  So  that,  in  cases  where  there  seems  to 
be  no  transmission  of  resemblances,  there  is  yet  a  proba- 
ble transmission,  only  one  that  is  covert  and  more  com- 
prehensive. Kow,  strong  external  resemblances  may 
coexist  with  marked  external  differences,  and  therefore 
do  not  prove  a  coincidence  of  character.  And  yet  it 
can  not  be  denied  that,  as  far  as  they  go,  the}^  argue  a 
transmission  of  capacities  and  dispositions,  which  enter 
into  character,  as  remote  causes  or  occasions.  Kor 
does  it  make  any  difference,  as  regards  the  matter  in 
question,  whether  souls  or  spiritual  natures  come  into 


98  THE    OKGANIC    UNITY 

being  tlirough  propagation,  or  not.  If  tliey  are  created, 
as  some  fancy,  by  the  immediate  inbreathing  of  God, 
still  they  are  measured  by  the  house  they  are  to  live  in, 
and  the  outward  man  is,  in  all  cases,  a  fit  organ  for  the 
person  within.  The  dispositions,  tempers,  capacities — 
the  natural,  and,  to  a  great  extent,  the  moral  character, 
have  the  outward  frame,  as  a  fit  organ  of  use  and  ex- 
pression. It  will  even  be  observed  too  that,  in  cases 
where  there  is  a  remarkable  change  of  character,  it  will 
be  signified,  in  due  time,  by  a  change  of  manner,  aspect, 
and  action. 

Besides,  it  is  well  understood  that  qualities  received 
by  training,  and  not  in  themselves  natural,  do  also  pass 
by  transmission.  It  is  said,  for  example,  that  the  dog 
used  in  hunting  was  originally  trained  by  great  care 
and  effort,  and  that  now  almost  no  training  is  necessary; 
for  the  artificial  quality  has  become,  to  a  great  extent, 
natural  in  the  stock.  We  have  also  a  most  ominous 
example  of  this  fact  in  the  human  species.  I  speak  of 
the  Jewish  race.  The  singular  devotion  of  this  race  to 
money  and  traffic  is  even  a  proverb.  But  their  ances- 
tors, of  the  ancient  times,  were  not  thus  distinguished. 
They  were  a  simple,  agricultural  people,  remarkable 
for  nothing  but  their  religious  opinions,  and,  in  a  late 
period  of  the  commonwealth,  for  their  fanatical  heroism 
and  obstinacy.  Whence  the  change?  History  gives 
the  mournful  answer,  showing  them  to  view,  for  long 
ages,  as  a  hated  and  down-trodden  people,  allowed  no 
rights  in  the  soil,  shut  up  within  some  narrow  and  foul 
precinct  in   the  cities,  compelled  to  subsist  by  some 


OF     THE     FAMILY.  99 

meager  traffic,  denied  every  possession  but  money,  and 
suffered  to  keep  in  security  not  even  that,  save  as  they 
could  hide  it  in  secret  places,  and  cloak  the  suspicion 
of  wealth  under  a  sordid  exterior.  They  have  thus 
been  educated  to  be  misers  by  the  extortions  and  the 
hatred  of  Christendom ;  till  finally  an  artificial  nature, 
so  to  speak,  has  been  formed  in  the  race,  and  we  take 
it  even  as  the  instinct  of  a  Jew,  to  get  money  by  small 
traffic  and  sharp  bargains.  So  there  is  little  room  to 
doubt  that  every  sort  of  character  and  employment 
passes  an  effect  and  works  some  predisposition  in  those 
who  come  after. 

Could  we  enter  into  the  mental  habits  of  those  chil- 
dren, who  are  spoken  of  in  my  text,  and  trace  out  all 
the  threads  of  their  inward  character  and  disposition, 
we  should  doubtless  find  some  color  of  idolatry  in  the 
fiber  of  their  very  being.  They  are  not  such  as  they 
would  be,  if  their  parents,  of  this  and  remote  genera- 
tions, had  been  worshipers  of  the  true  God.  Their 
talents,  dispositions,  proj)ensities  are  different.  The 
idol  god  is  in  their  faces  and  their  bones,  and  his  stamp 
is  on  their  spirit.  Not  in  such  a  sense  that  the  sin  of 
idolatry  is  in  them — that  is  inconceivable ;  for  no  pro- 
per sin  can  pass  by  transmission — ^but  that  they  have  a 
vicious,  or  prejudicial  infection  from  it,  a  damage  accru- 
ino;  from  their  historical  connection  and  that  of  their 
progenitors  with  it. 

Nor,  with  these  familiar  laws  of  physiology  before 
us,  is  it  reasonable  to  doubt  that,  where  there  is  a  long 
line  of  godly  fathers  and  mothers,  kept  up  in  regular 


100  THE    ORGANIC     UNITY 

succession  for  many  generations,  a  religious  tempera- 
ment may  at  length  be  produced,  that  is  more  in  the 
power  of  conscience,  less  wayward  as  regards  principles 
of  integrity,  and  more  pliant  to  the  Christian  motives. 
More  could  be  said  with  confidence,  if  the  godly 
character  were  less  ambiguous  and  more  thoroughly 
sanctified. 

8.  We  shall  find  that  there  is  a  law  of  connection, 
after  birth,  under  which  power  over  character  is  ex- 
erted, without  any  design  to  do  it.  For  a  considerable 
time  after  birth,  the  child  has  no  capacity  of  will  and 
choice  developed,  and  therefore  is  not  a  subject  of  in- 
fluence, in  the  common  sense  of  that  term.  He  is  not 
as  yet  a  complete  individual ;  he  has  only  powers  and 
capacities  that  prepare  him  to  be,  when  they  are  un- 
folded. They  are  in  him  only  as  wings  and  a  capacity 
to  fly  are  in  the  egg.  Meantime,  he  is  oj)en  to  impres- 
sions from  every  thing  he  sees.  His  character  is  form- 
ing, under  a  principle,  not  of  choice,  but  of  nurture. 
The  spirit  of  the  house  is  breathed  into  his  nature,  day 
by  day.  The  anger  and  gentleness,  the  fretfulness  and 
patience — the  appetites,  passions,  and  manners — all  the 
variant  moods  of  feeling  exhibited  round  him,  pass  into 
him  as  impressions,  and  become  seeds  of  character  in 
him  ;  not  because  the  parents  will,  but  because  it  must 
be  so,  whether  they  will  or  not.  They  propagate  their 
own  evil  in  the  child,  not  by  design,  but  under  a  law 
of  moral  infection.  Before  the  children  begin  to  gather 
wood  for  the  sacrifice,  the  spirit  of  the  idol  and  his 
faith  has  been  communicated.     The  airs  and  feelings 


OF    THE    FAMILY.  101 

and  conduct  of  idolatry  have  filled  their  nature  with 
impressions,  which  are  back  of  all  choice  and  memory. 
Go  out  to  them  then,  as  they  are  gathering  faggots  for 
the  idol  sacrifice,  ask  them  what  questions  they  have  had 
about  the  service  of  the  god?  what  doubts?  whether 
any  unsatisfied  debate  or  perplexing  struggle  has  vis- 
ited their  minds  ?  and  you  will  probably  awaken  their 
first  thoughts  on  the  subject  by  the  inquiry  itself.  All 
because  they  have  grown  up  in  the  idol  worship,  from  a 
point  back  of  memory.  They  received  it  through  their 
impressions,  before  they  were  able  to  receive  it  from 
choice.  And  so  it  is  with  all  the  moral  transactions  of 
the  house.  The  spirit  of  the  house  is  in  the  members 
by  nurture,  not  by  teaching,  not  by  any  attempt  to  com- 
municate the  same,  but  because  it  is  the  air  the  children 
breathe. 

Now,  it  is  in  the  twofold  manner  set  forth,  under  this 
and  the  previous  head  of  my  discourse,  that  our  race 
have  fallen,  as  a  race,  into  moral  corruption  and  apos- 
tasy. In  these  two  methods,  the  race  have  been  sub- 
jected, as  an  organic  unity,  to  evil ;  so  that  when  they 
come  to  the  age  of  proper  individuality,  the  damage 
received  has  prepared  them  to  set  forth,  on  a  course  of 
blamable  and  guilty  transgression.  The  question  of 
original  or  imputed  sin  has  been  much  debated  in  mod- 
ern times,  and  the  effort  has  been  to  vindicate  the  per- 
sonal responsibility  of  each  individual,  as  a  moral  agent. 
Nor  is  any  thing  more  clear,  on  first  principles,  than 
that  no  man  is  responsible  for  any  sin  but  his  own. 
The  sin  of  no  person  can  be  transmitted  as  a  sin,  or 


102  THE    ORGANIC    UNITY 

charged  to  the  account  of  another.  But  it  does  not 
therefore  follow,  that  there  are  no  moral  connections 
between  individuals,  by  which  one  becomes  a  corrupter 
of  others.  If  we  are  units,  so  also  are  we  a  race,  and 
the  race  is  one — one  family,  one  organic  whole ;  such 
that  the  fall  of  the  head  involves  the  fall  of  all  the 
members.  Under  the  old  doctrines  of  original  sin, 
federal  headship,  and  the  like,  cast  away  by  many, 
ridiculed  by  not  a  few,  there  yet  lies  a  great  and  mo- 
mentous truth,  announced  by  reason  as  clearly  as  by 
Scripture — that  in  Adam  all  die ;  that  by  one  man's 
disobedience  many  were  made  sinners ;  that  death  hath 
passed  upon  all  men,  for  that  all  have  sinned.  Not 
that  this  original  scheme  of  unity  is  any  disadvantage. 
I  firmly  believe  and  think  1  could  show  the  contrary 
even.  Enough  that  so  the  Scriptures  speak,  and  that 
so  we  see,  by  inspection  itself.  There  can  be  no 
greater  credulity,  than  for  any  man  to  expect  that 
a  sinful  and  death-struck  being,  one  who  has  fallen  out 
of  the  harmony  of  his  mold  by  sin,  should  yet  com- 
municate no  trace  of  evil  from  himself,  no  diseased 
or  damaged  quality,  no  moral  discolor,  to  the  gene- 
rations that  derive  their  existence  from  him.  To 
make  that  possible,  every  law  of  physiology  must 
be  adjourned,  and,  what  is  more,  all  that  we  see 
with  our  eyes,  in  the  eventful  era  of  impressions,  must 
be  denied. 

I  am  well  aware  that  those  who  have  advocated,  in 
former  times,  the  church  dogma  of  original  sin,  as  well 
as  those  who  adhere  to  it  now,  speak  only  of  a  taint 


OF    THE    FAMILY.  103 

derived  oy  natural  or  physical  propagation,  and  do  not 
include  the  taint  derived  afterwards,  under  the  law  of 
family  infection.  It  certainly  can  be  no  heresy  to  in- 
clude the  latter ;  and,  since  it  is  manifest  that  both  fall 
within  the  same  general  category  of  organic  connection, 
it  is  equally  manifest  that  both  ought  to  be  included, 
and,  in  all  systematic  reasonings,  must  be.  If,  during 
the  age  of  impressions  in  the  child,  and  previous  to  the 
development  of  will,  a  power  is  exerted  over  charac- 
ter— exerted  necessarily,  both  as  regards  the  sinful 
parent  and  the  child,  and  that  as  truly  as  if  it  fell 
within  the  laws  of  propagation  itself — it  can  not  be 
right  to  attribute  the  moral  taint  wholly,  or  even  prin- 
cipally, to  propagation.  Until  the  child  comes  to  his 
will,  we  must  regard  him  still  as  held  within  the  matrix 
of  the  parental  life ;  and  then,  when  he  is  ripe  for  re- 
sponsible choice,  as  born  for  action — a  proper  and  com- 
plete person.  Taking  this  comprehensive  view  of  the 
organic  unity  of  successive  generations  of  men,  the 
truth  we  assert  of  human  depravation  is  not  a  half-truth 
exaggerated,  (which  many  will  not  regard  as  any  truth 
at  all,)  but  it  is  a  broad,  well-authenticated  doctrine, 
which  no  intelligent  observer  of  facts  and  principles 
can  deny.  It  shows  the  past  descending  on  the  pres- 
ent, the  present  on  the  future,  by  an  inevitable  law,  and 
yet  gives  every  parent  the  hope  of  mitigating  the  sad 
legacy  of  mischief  he  entails  upon  his  children,  by 
whatever  improvements  of  character  and  conduct  he  is 
able  to  make — a  hope  which  Christian  promise  so  far 
clears  to  his  view,  as  even  to  allow  him  the  presump- 


104  the}organic  unity 

tion  that  his  child  may  be  set  forth  into  responsible 
action,  as  a  Christian  person. 

In  offering  these  thoughts,  it  will  be  seen  that  I  have 
not  digressed  from  my  subject,  but  have  extended  the 
proof  of  my  doctrine  rather,  discovering  within  its 
scope,  the  fall  of  man  itself.  As  a  farther  proof  of  the 
organic  unity  of  the  family,  I  allege — 

4.  The  fact  that,  in  all  organic  bodies  known  to  us — 
states,  churches,  sects,  armies— there  is  a  common  spirit, 
by  which  they  are  pervaded  and  distinguished  from 
each  other.  And  we  use  this  word  spirit^  in  such  cases, 
to  denote  a  power  interfused,  a  comprehensive  will 
actuating  the  members,  regarding  also  the  common 
body  itself,  as  a  larger  and  more  inclusive  individual. 
How  different,  for  example,  is  the  spirit  of  France  from 
the  spirit  of  England  ?  the  spirit  of  both  from  that  of 
the  United  States  ?  and  that  from  the  spirit  of  the  Spar- 
tan or  Athenian  republic  ?  This  national  spirit,  too,  is, 
as  it  were,  a  common  power  in  each,  by  which  the  sub- 
ordinate individual  members  are  assimilated,  and  made 
to  have  a  kind  of  organic  character.  And  so  much  is 
there  in  this,  that  an  Englishman  can  not  make  to  him- 
self a  French  character,  or  any  one  of  us  an  English 
character.  We  can  not  act  the  character  one  of  another ; 
for  so  distant  are  the  feelings,  prejudices,  and  tempera- 
ments of  each,  that  they  can  not  even  be  accurately 
conceived  and  reproduced,  unless  we  are  actually  en- 
veloped in  them  as  an  atmosphere. 

In  the  same  manner,  there  is  a  peculiar  spirit  in  every 
church.     Whether  you  take  the  larger  divisions,  the 


OF    THf:    FAMILY.  105 

Jewish,  the  Greek,  the  Eoman,  the  Episcopal,  the 
Presbyterian,  the  Baptist,  the  Congregational,  or  de- 
scend to  the  particular  churches  of  a  given  city,  you 
will  find  something  characteristic  in  each — a  common 
power,  which  gives  a  common  stamp  to  the  members 
peculiar  to  themselves.  Or,  if  you  visit  a  Quaker  set- 
tlement, where  a  few  men  and  women  are  gathered  into 
a  kind  of  church  family,  you  will  discover  that  the 
members  are  pervaded,  all,  by  a  peculiar  spirit,  as  dis- 
tinct from  the  world  around  them  as  if  they  were  a 
new  discovered  people.  And  these  Quaker  settlements 
may  be  taken  as  a  kind  of  intermediate  link  between 
the  church-state  and  the  family. 

Passing  then  to  families,  you  are  not  surprised  to  dis- 
cover the  same  thing.  This  is  specially  evident  where 
the  family  is  isolated,  and  does  not  mingle  extensively 
w^ith  the  world.  You  can  scarcely  open  the  door,  and 
take  a  seat  in  their  house,  least  of  all  can  you  go  to 
their  table,  or  spend  a  night  in  their  hospitality,  with- 
out being  impressed  by  the  fact.  And  this  family  spirit 
will  sometimes  be  exceedingly  opposite  to  the  spirit  of 
goodness.  Here  it  is  money,  money,  written  on  every 
face ;  here  it  is  good  living ;  here  show ;  here  scandal 
and  detraction.  Sometimes  the  sense  of  religion  and 
of  spiritual  things  will  seem  to  be  nearly  lost,  or  obliter- 
ated. Sometimes  a  positive  hatred  of  God  and  all 
good  men  and  principles  will  constitute  the  staple  of 
family  feeling.  Sometimes  a  dull  and  sullen  contempt 
of  such  things  will  hold  the  place  of  open  animosity. 

It  is  very  true  that  the  family  spirit  does  not  always 


106  THE    ORGANIC    UNITY 

perfectly  master  and  assimilate  all  the  members.  You 
will  find  a  Christian  son  or  daughter,  here  and  there,  in 
spite  of  the  ruling  spirit  of  the  house.  This,  however, 
because  families  are  to  some  extent  intermingled;  in 
which  it  comes  to  pass  that  children  often  fall  under  the 
power  of  another  spirit,  that  masters  the  spirit  reigning 
at  home.  The  children  go  into  other  families,  where 
they  are  visited  by  other  feelings.  They  go  into  the 
church  of  God,  where  the  church  spirit  breathes  another 
atmosphere.  In  the  school,  they  are  penetrated  by  the 
school  spirit.  In  the  shop,  or  in  the  transactions  of 
trade,  the  same  is  true.  Were  it  not  for  this,  the  fam- 
ily spirit  might  almost  uniformly  rule  the  character  of 
the  members.  Who  ever  expects  that  an  idolatrous 
religion,  in  the  house,  will  not  uniformly  produce  idola- 
ters ?  So  tlie  Mohammedan  spirit  makes  only  Moham- 
medans. In  like  manner,  a  thievish  house  perpetuates 
a  race  of  thieves.  Consider  also  the  ductility  and  the 
perfect  passivity  of  childhood.  Early  childhood  resists 
nothing.  What  is  given  it  receives,  making  no  selec- 
tion. To  expect  therefore  that  a  child  will  form  to 
himself  a  spirit  opposite  to  the  spirit  of  the  family, 
without  once  feeling  the  power  of  a  counteractive  spirit, 
would  be  credulous  in  the  highest  degree.  Doubt- 
less he  has  a  conscience,  which  is  the  law  of  God,  in 
his  breast,  and  he  has  a  will  free  to  choose  what  his  con- 
science requires.  But  his  passions  are  unfolded  before 
his  discretion,  his  prejudices  bent  before  he  assumes  the 
function  of  self-government.  He  breathes  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  house.     He  sees  the  world  through  his 


OF    THE    FAMILY,  107 

parents'  eyes.  Their  objects  become  his.  Their  life 
and  spirit  mold  him.  If  they  are  carnal,  coarse,  pas- 
sionate, profane,  sensual,  devilish,  his  little  plastic 
nature  takes  the  poison  of  course.  Their  very  motions, 
manners,  and  voices,  will  be  distinguishable  in  him. 
He  lives  and  moves  and  has  his  being  in  them. 

I  do  not  say,  of  course,  that  he  will  exactly  resemble 
them  in  character.  Were  he  to  receive  a  contagious 
disease,  he  would,  doubtless,  be  differently  handled 
under  it,  from  the  person  who  gave  the  infection.  I 
only  say,  that  the  moral  disease  of  the  family  he  assur- 
edly will  take,  and  that,  probably,  without  even  a  ques- 
tion, or  a  cautious  feeling  started.  If  some  other  spirit, 
from  other  families,  or  the  church,  or  the  world,  do  not 
reach  him,  the  organic  spirit  of  the  house  will  infallibly 
shape  and  subordinate  his  character. 

5.  We  are  led  to  the  same  conclusions,  by  consider- 
ing what  may  be  called  the  organic  loorhing  of  a  family. 
The  child  begins,  at  length,  to  develop  his  character,  in 
and  through  his  voluntary  power.  But  he  is  still  under 
the  authority  of  the  parent,  and  has  only  a  partial  con- 
trol of  himself,  in  the  development  of  which,  he  is  gradu- 
ally approaching  a  complete  personality.  Now,  there 
is  a  perpetual  working  in  the  family,  by  which  the  wills, 
both  of  the  parents  and  the  children,  are  held  in  exer- 
cise, and  which,  without  any  design  to  affect  character 
on  one  side  or  conscious  consent  on  the  other,  is  yet 
fashioning  results  of  a  moral  quality,  as  it  were  by  the 
joint  industry  of  the  house.  And  these  results  are  to 
be  taken,  according  to  our  definition,  as  included  in  the 


108  THE    ORGANIC     UNITY 

organic  unity  of  the  family.  I  except,  of  course,  all 
the  voluntary  actings  that  are  designed  to  influence 
the  child,  and  are  yielded  to  by  him,  as  consciously 
right  or  wrong. 

The  truth  here  brought  to  view  is  graphically  set 
forth  in  my  text.  Whatever  working  there  is  in  the 
house,  all  work  together.  If  the  fathers  kindle  the  fire, 
and  the  women  knead  the  cakes,  the  children  will 
gather  the  wood,  and  the  idol  worship  will  set  the  whole 
circle  of  the  house  in  action.  The  child  being  under 
the  law  of  the  parents,  they  will  keep  him  at  work  to 
execute  their  plans,  or  their  sins,  as  the  case  may  be ; 
and,  as  they  will  seldom  think  of  what  they  do,  or 
require,  so  he  will  seldom  have  any  scruple  concerning 
it.  The  property  gained  belongs  to  the  family.  They 
have  a  common  interest,  and  every  prejudice  or  ani- 
mosity felt  by  the  parents,  the  children  are  sure  to  feel 
even  more  intensely.  They  are  all  locked  together,  in 
one  cause — in  common  cares,  hopes,  offices,  and  duties ; 
for  their  honor  and  dishonor,  their  sustenance,  their 
ambition,  all  their  objects  are  common.  So  they  are 
trained  of  necessity  to  a  kind  of  general  working,  or 
cooperation,  and,  like  stones,  rolled  together  in  some 
brook  or  eddy,  they  wear  each  other  into  common 
shapes.  If  the  family  subsist  by  plunder,  then  the 
infant  is  swaddled  as  a  thief,  the  child  wears  a  thief's 
garments,  and  feeds  the  growth  of  his  body  on  stolen 
meat ;  and,  in  due  time,  he  will  have  the  trade  upon 
him,  without  ever  knowing  that  he  has  taken  it  up,  or 
when  he  took  it  up.     If  the  father  is  intemperate,  the 


OF    THE    FAMILY.  109 

children  must  go  on  errands  to  procure  his  supplies, 
lose  the  shame  that  might  be  their  safety,  be  immersed 
in  the  fumes  of  liquor  in  going  and  coming,  and  why 
not  rewarded  by  an  occasional  taste  of  what  is  so  essen- 
tial to  the  enjoyment  of  life  ?  If  the  family  subsist  in 
idleness  and  beggary,  then  the  children  will  be  trained 
to  lie  skillfully,  and  maintain  their  false  pretences  with 
a  plausible  effrontery — all  this,  you  will  observe,  not 
as  a  sin,  but  as  a  trade. 

Nor  does  what  I  am  saying  hold,  only  in  cases  of 
extreme  viciousness  and  depravity.  Whatever  fire  the 
fathers  kindle,  the  children  are  always  found  gathering 
the  wood — always  helping  as  accessaries  and  appren- 
tices. If  the  father  reads  a  newspaper,  or  a  sporting 
gazette,  on  Sunday,  the  family  must  help  him  find  it. 
If  he  writes  a  letter  of  business  on  Sunday,  he  will 
send  his  child  to  the  office  with  the  letter.  If  the 
mother  is  a  scandal-monger,  she  will  make  her  children 
spies  and  eaves-droppers.  If  she  directs  her  servant  to 
say,  at  the  door,  that  she  is  not  at  home,  she  will  some- 
times be  overheard  by  her  child.  If  she  is  ambitious 
that  her  children  should  excel  in  the  display  of  finery 
and  fashion,  they  must  wear  the  show  and  grow  up  in 
the  spirit  of  it.  If  her  house  is  a  den  of  disorder  and 
filth,  they  must  be  at  home  in  it.  Fretfulness  and  ill- 
temper  in  the  parents  are  provocations,  and  therefore 
somewhat  more  efficacious  than  commandments,  to  the 
same.  The  proper  result  will  be  a  congenial  assem- 
blage, in  the  house,  of  petulence  and  ill-nature.  The 
niggardly  parsimony  that  quarrels  with  a  child,  when 


110  THE    OKGAKIC    UNITY 

asking  for  a  book  needful  for  his  proficiency  at  school, 
is  teaching  him  that  money  is  worth  more  than  knowl- 
edge. If  the  parents  are  late  risers,  the  children  must 
not  disturb  the  house,  but  stay  quiet  and  take  a  lesson 
that  is  not  to  assist  their  energy  and  promptness  in  the 
future  business  of  life.  If  they  go  to  church  only  half 
of  the  day,  they  will  not  send  their  children  the  other 
half  If  they  never  read  the  Bible,  they  will  never 
teach  it.  If  they  laugh  at  religion,  they  will  put  a  face 
upon  it,  which  will  make  their  children  justify  the  con- 
tempt they  express.  This  enumeration  might  be  indefi- 
nitely extended.  Enough  that  we  see,  in  the  working 
of  the  house,  how  all  the  members  work  together. 
The  children  fall  into  their  places  naturally,  as  it  were, 
and  unconsciously,  to  do  and  to  suffer  exactly  what  the 
general  scheme  of  the  house  requires.  "Without  any 
design  to  that  effect,  all  the  actings  of  business,  pleas- 
ure, and  sin,  propagate  themselves  throughout  the  cir- 
cle, as  the  weights  of  a  clock  maintain  the  workings  of 
the  wheels.  Where  there  is  no  effort  to  teach  wrong, 
or  thought  of  it,  the  house  is  yet  a  school  of  wrong, 
and  the  life  of  the  house  is  only  a  practical  drill  in 
evil. 

Having  sufficiently  estabHshed,  as  I  think,  by  these 
illustrations,  the  organic  unity  of  families,  it  remains 
to  add  some  practical  thoughts  of  a  more  specific  na- 
ture.    And — 

1.  It  becomes  a  question  of  great  moment,  as  con- 
nected with  the  doctrine  established,  whether  it  is  the 


OF     THE     FAMILY.  Ill 

design  of  the  Christian  scheme  to  take  possession  of  the 
organic  laws  of  the  family,  and  wield  them  as  instru- 
ments, in  any  sense,  of  a  regenerative  purpose  ?  And 
here  we  are  met  by  the  broad  principle,  that  Christian- 
ity endeavors  to  make  every  object,  favor,  and  relation, 
an  instrument  of  righteousness,  according  to  its  original 
design.  What  intelligent  person  ever  supposed  that 
the  original  constitution,  by  which  one  generation  de- 
rives its  existence  and  receives  the  bent  of  its  character 
from  another,  was  designed  of  God  to  be  the  vehicle 
only  of  depravity  ?  It  might  as  well  be  supposed  that 
men  themselves  were  made  to  be  containers  of  deprav- 
it}^  The  only  supposition  that  honors  Grod  is,  that  the 
organic  unity,  of  which  I  speak,  was  ordained  originally 
for  the  nurture  of  holy  virtue  in  the  beginning  of  each 
soul's  history;  and  that  Christianity,  or  redemption, 
must  of  necessity  take  possession  of  the  abused  vehicle, 
and  sanctify  it  for  its  own  merciful  uses.  That  an 
engine  of  so  great  power  should  be  passed  by,  when 
every  other  law  and  object  in  the  universe  is  appropria- 
ted and  wielded  as  an  instrument  of  grace,  and  that  in 
a  movement  for  the  redemption  of  the  race,  is  incon- 
ceivable. The  conclusion  thus  reached  does  not  carry 
us,  indeed,  to  the  certain  inference  that  the  organic 
unity  of  the  family  will  avail  to  set  forth  every  child 
of  Christian  parents,  in  a  Christian  life.  But  if  we  con- 
sider the  tremendous  power  it  has,  as  an  instrument 
of  evil,  how  far  short  of  such  an  opinion  does  it  leave 
us,  when  computing  the  reach  of  its  power  as  an  instru- 
ment of  grace? 


112  THE     ORGANIC     UNITY 

Passing  next  to  the  Scriptures,  we  find  such  reason- 
ings justified,  as  explicitly  as  we  can  desire.  I  am  not 
disposed  to  press  the  language  of  Scripture,  which  is 
popular,  to  extreme  conclusions.  But  I  observe  that 
Christ  is  called  a  second  Adam  and  a  last  Adam :  lan- 
guage, to  say  the  least,  that  suits  the  idea  of  a  proposed 
union  with  the  race,  under  its  organic  laws — as  if,  en- 
tering into  the  Christian  family,  his  design  were  to  fill 
it  with  a  family  spirit,  which  shall  controvert  and  mas- 
ter the  old  evil  spirit.  The  declaration  corresponds, 
that,  as  by  one  man's  disobedience  many  were  made 
sinners,  so  by  the  obedience  of  one  shall  many  be  made 
righteous — language  that  measures  the  grace  by  the 
mischief,  and  shows  it  flowing  in  a  parallel,  but  fuller 
stream.  It  may  not  be  easy  to  settle,  beyond  dispute, 
the  relation  of  the  old  covenant  to  the  new  ;  but  there 
can  be  no  question  that  the  church,  under  Abraham, 
was  measured,  in  some  sense,  by  the  organic  unity 
of  the  family  of  Abraham.  The  covenant  was  a  family 
covenant,  in  which  God  engaged  to  be  the  God  of  the 
seed,  as  of  the  father.  And  the  seal  of  the  covenant 
was  a  seal  of  faitli^  applied  to  the  whole  house,  as  if  the 
continuity  of  faith  were  somehow  to  be,  or  somehow 
might  be  maintained,  in  a  line  that  is  parallel  with  the 
continuity  of  sin,  in  the  family.  Nor  was  the  result  to 
depend  on  mere  natural  generation,  however  sanctified, 
but  on  the  organic  causes  also,  that  are  involved  in  fam- 
ily nurture,  after  birth.  For  we  are  expressly  informed, 
(Gen.  xviii.  19,)  that  God  rested  his  covenant,  or  engage- 
ment, on  the  conduct  of  Abraham — "for  I  know  him, 


OF    THE    FAMILY.  113 

that  lie  will  command  his  children  and  his  household 
after  him,  and  they  shall  keep  the  way  of  the  Lord,  to 
do  justice  and  judgment,  that  the  Lord  may  bring  upon 
Abraham  that  which  he  hath  spoken  of  him."  And  thus 
we  see  that  the  old  church,  beyond  any  possible  ques- 
tion, was  to  have  its  grounds  of  perpetuity,  in  and  by  the 
same  terms  of  organic  unity,  which  sin  has  made  the 
vehicle  of  depravity.  Descending  then  to  the  Kew  Tes- 
tament, Jesus  the  world's  Redeemer  is  declared  to  have 
suffered,  "that  the  Messing  of  Abraham  might  come  on 
the  Gentiles,"  and  the  Gentiles  are  said  to  be  "  graffed  in." 
The  new  "seed,"  viz.,  "Christ,"  are  said  to  be  "the  seed 
of  Abraham,"  and  "heirs  of  the  promise"  made  to  him. 
The  old  rite  of  proselyte  baptism,  which  made  the  fam- 
ilies receiving  it  Jewish  citizens  and  children  of  Abra- 
ham, was  applied  over  directly  to  the  Christian  uses,  and 
the  rite  went  by  "households;"  even  as  the  New  Testa- 
ment promise  also  was — "to  you  and  to  your  children." 
Even  the  old  Jewish  law,  that  one  Jewish  parent  made  a 
Jewish  child,  is  brought  into  the  church,  and  one  believing 
parent  "sanctifies"  the  child.  Li  all  of  which,  it  seems 
to  be  clearly  held  that  grace  shall  travel  by  the  same 
conveyance  with  sin ;  that  the  organic  unity,  which  I 
have  spoken  of  chiefly  as  an  instrument  of  corruption, 
is  to  be  occupied  and  sanctified  by  Christ,  and  become 
an  instrument  also  of  mercy  and  life.  And  thence  it 
follows  that  the  seal  of  faith,  applied  to  households,  is 
to  be  no  absurdity ;  for  it  is  the  privilege  and  duty  of 
every  Christian  parent  that  his  children  shall  come  forth 
into  responsible  action,  as  a  regenerated  stock.     The  or- 


114  THE    ORGANIC    UNITY 

ganic  unity  is  to  be  a  power  of  life.  God  engages,  on 
his  part,  tbat  it  may  be,  and  calls  the  Christian  parent 
to  promise,  on  his  part,  that  it  shall  be.  Thus  the 
church  has  a  constitutive  element  from  the  family  in  it 
still,  as  it  had  in  the  days  of  Abraham.  The  church 
life — that  is,  the  Holy  Spirit— collects  families  into  a 
common  organism,  and  then,  by  sanctifying  the  laws  of 
organic  unity  in  families,  extends  its  quickening  power 
to  the  generation  following,  so  as  to  include  the  future, 
and  make  it  one  with  the  past.  And  so  the  church,  in 
all  ages,  becomes  a  body  under  Christ  the  head,  as  the 
race  is  a  body  under  Adam  the  head — a  living  body, 
quickened  by  him  who  hath  life  in  himself,  fitly  joined 
together  and  compacted  by  that  which  every  joint 
supplieth. 

2.  The  theological  importance  of  our  doctrine  of  or- 
ganic unity,  when  brought  up  to  this  point,  is  exhibited 
in  many  ways,  and  especially  in  the  fact  that  it  gives 
the  only  true  solution  of  the  Christian  church  and  of 
baptism  as  related  to  membership.  I  hardly  dare  at- 
tempt to  speak  of  the  "sacramental  grace,"  supposed  to 
attend  the  rite  of  baptism,  under  the  priestly  forms  of 
Christianity ;  for  I  have  never  been  able  to  give  any 
consistent  and  dignified  meaning  to  the  language,  in 
which  it  is  set  forth.  That  there  is  a  grace  attendant, 
falling  on  all  the  parties  concerned,  is  quite  evident,  if 
they  are  doing  their  duty ;  for  no  person,  whether  laic 
or  priest,  can  do,  or  intend  what  is  right,  without  some 
spiritual  benefit.  But  the  child  is  said  to  be  "regener- 
ate, spiritually  united  to  Christ,  a  new  creature  in  Christ 


OF    THE     FAMILY.  115 

Jesus,"  under  tlie  official  grace  of  baptism.  Then  tliis 
language,  so  full  of  import,  is  defined,  after  all,  to  mean 
onl}^  that  the  child  is  in  the  church,  where  the  grace  of 
God  surrounds  him — translated  (not  internally,  but  ex- 
ternally) from  the  sphere  of  nature  into  a  new  sphere, 
where  all  the  aids  of  grace,  available  for  his  salvation, 
are  furnished.  Sometimes  it  is  added  that  his  sins  are 
remitted,  though  lio  man  is  likely  to  believe  that  he  has 
any  sins  to  remit ;  or,  if  the  meaning  be  that  the  cor- 
rupted quality,  phj^siologically  inherent  in  his  nature,  is 
washed  away,  he  will  show  in  due  time  that  it  is  not ; 
and  no  one,  in  fact,  believes  that  it  is.  Then  if  it  be 
asked,  whether  the  new  sphere  of  grace  will  assuredly 
work  a  gracious  character?  "no,"  is  the  answer.  "If 
the  child  is  not  faithful,  or  hinders  the  grace,  he  will  lose 
it " — that  is,  he  will  not  stay  regenerate.  And  then  as 
the  child,  in  every  case,  is  sure,  in  some  bad  sense,  not 
to  be  faithful,  he  is  equally  sure  to  lose  the  grace,  and 
be  landed  in  a  second  state  that  is  worse  than  the  first. 
And  thus  it  turns  out,  after  all,  as  far  as  I  can  see,  that 
the  grace  magnified  iii  the  beginning,  by  words  of  so 
high  an  import,  is  a  thing  of  no  value — it  is  nothing. 
It  is,  in  fact,  one  of  our  most  decided  objections  to  this 
scheme  of  sacramental  grace,  (paradoxical  as  it  may 
seem,)  that,  really  and  truly,  there  is  not  enough  of  im- 
port in  it  to  save  the  meaning  of  the  rite.  The  grace  is 
words  only,  and  an  air  of  imposture  is  all  that  remains, 
after  the  words  are  explained.  The  rite  is  fertile  only 
in  maintaining  a  superstition.  Practically  speaking,  it 
only  exalts  a  prerogative.     By  a  motion  of  his  hand, 


116  THE    ORGANIC    UNITY 

the  priest  breaks  in,  to  interrupt  and  displace  all  the 
laws  of  character  in  life — communicating  an  abrupt, 
ictic  grace,  as  much  wider  of  all  dignity  and  reason, 
than  any  which  the  new  light  theology  has  asserted,  as 
the  regenerative  power  is  more  subject  to  a  human  dis 
pensation.  A  superstitious  homage  collects  about  his 
person.  The  child  looks  on  him  as  one  who  opens 
heaven  by  a  ceremony !  The  ungodly  parent  hurries  to 
him,  to  get  the  regenerative  grace  for  his  dying  child. 
The  bereaved  parent  mourns  inconsolably,  and  even 
curses  himself,  that  he  neglected  to  obtain  the  grace  for 
his  child,  now  departed.  The  priest,  in  the  eye,  dis- 
places the  memory  of  duty  and  godliness  in  the  heart. 
A  thousand  superstitions,  degrading  to  religion  and 
painful  to  look  upon,  hang  around  this  view  of  baptism. 
Not  to  produce  them,  the  doctrine  must  yield  up  its 
own  nature. 

In  all  this,  I  speak  constructively,  as  reasoning  from 
the  doctrine  asserted,  and  as  I  am  able  to  understand  it. 
Constructive  results  are  never  more  than  partially  veri- 
fied by  historic  facts ;  for  great  truths,  blended  with  the 
error,  qualify  and  mitigate  its  effects. 

Now  the  true  conception  is,  that  baptism  is  applied 
to  the  child,  on  the  ground  of  its  organic  unity  with 
the  parents;  imparting  and  pledging  a  grace  to  sanc- 
tify that  unity,  and  make  it  good  in  the  field  of  re- 
ligion. By  the  supposition,  however,  the  child  still 
remains  within  the  known  laws  of  character  in  the 
house,  to  receive,  under  these,  whatever  good  may 
reach  him;   not    snatched    away  by   an    abrupt,  fatv 


OF    THE    FAMILY.  117 

tastica],  and  therefore  incredible  grace.  He  is  taken 
to  be  regenerate,  not  historically  speaking,  but  pre- 
sumptively, on  the  ground  of  his  known  connection 
with  the  parent  character,  and  the  divine  or  church 
life,  which  is  the  life  of  that  character.  Perhaps  I  shall 
be  understood  more  easily,  if  I  say  that  the  child  is  po- 
tentially regenerate,  being  regarded  as  existing  in  con- 
nection with  powers  and  causes  that  contain  the  fact, 
before  time  and  separate  from  time.  For  when  the  fact 
appears  historically,  under  the  law  of  time,  it  is  not 
more  truly  real,  in  a  certain  sense,  than  it  was  before. 
And  then  the  grace  conferred,  being  conferred  by  no 
casual  act,  but  resting  in  the  established  laws  of  char- 
acter, in  the  church  and  the  house,  is  not  lost  by  un- 
faithfulness, but  remains  and  lingers  still,  though  abused 
and  weakened,  to  encourage  new  struggles. 

Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  the  doctrine  of  organic  unity 
I  have  been  asserting,  proves  its  theologic  value,  as  a 
ready  solvent  fbr  the  rather  perplexing  difiiculties  of 
this  difiicult  subject.  Only  one  difficulty  remains,  viz, 
that  so  few  can  believe  the  doctrine. 

8.  It  is  evident  that  the  voluntary  intention  of  pa- 
rents, in  regard  to  their  children,  is  no  measure,  either 
of  their  merit  or  their  sin.  Few  parents  are  so  base,  or 
so  lost  to  natural  affection,  as  really  to  intend  the  injury 
of  their  children.  However  irreligious,  or  immoral, 
they  more  commonly  desire  a  worthy  and  correct  char- 
acter for  their  children,  often  even  a  Christian  character. 
But,  in  the  great  and  momentous  truth  now  set  forth, 
you  perceive  it  is  not  what  you  intend  for  your  children, 


118  THE    OEGANIC    UNITY 

SO  mucli  as  what  you  are,  that  is  to  have  its  effect. 
They  are  connected,  by  an  organic  unity,  not  with  your 
instructions,  but  with  your  Hfe.  And  your  hfe  is  more 
powerful  than  your  instructions  can  be.  They  might 
be  jealous  of  intended  corruption,  and  withstand  it; 
but  the  spirit  of  the  house,  which  is  your  spirit,  the 
whole  working  of  the  house,  which  is  actuated  by  you, 
is  what  no  exercise  of  will,  even  if  they  had  more  of  it 
than  they  have,  could  well  resist.  Therefore,  what  you 
are,  they  will  almost  necessarily  be ;  and  then,  as  you 
are  responsible  for  what  you  are,  you  must  also  be  re- 
sponsible for  the  ruin  brought  on  them.  And,  if  you 
desired  better  things  for  them,  as  you  probably  say, 
the  more  guilty  are  you  that,  knowing  and  desiring 
better  things,  you  thwarted  your  desires  by  your  own 
evil  life. 

So  there  are  Christians  who  intend  and  do  many  things 
for  their  children,  and  thus  acquit  themselves  of  all 
blame  in  regard  to  their  character.  Here,  alas !  is  the 
perpetual  error  of  Christian  parents,  so  called,  that  they 
endeavor  to  make  up,  by  direct  efforts,  for  the  mis- 
chiefs of  a  loose  and  neglectful  life.  They  convince 
themselves  that  teaching,  lecturing,  watch,  discipline, 
things  done  with  a  purpose,  are  the  sum  of  duty.  As 
if  mere  affectations  and  will-works  could  cheat  the  laws 
of  life  and  character  ordained  by  God !  Your  character 
is  a  stream,  a  river,  flowing  down  upon  your  children, 
hour  by  hour.  What  you  do  here  and  there  to  carry 
an  opposing  influence  is,  at  best,  only  a  ripple  that  you 
make  on   the  surface  of  the  stream.     It  reveals  the 


OF    THE    FAMILY.  119 

sweep  of  the  current ;  notliing  more.  If  you  expect 
your  cliildren  to  go  with  the  ripple,  instead  of  the 
stream,  you  will  be  disappointed.  I  beseech  you  then, 
as  you  love  your  children,  to  admit  other  and  worthier 
thoughts,  thoughts  more  safe  for  them  and  certainly  for 
you.  Understand  that  it  is  the  family  spirit,  the  or- 
ganic life  of  the  house,  the  silent  power  of  a  domestic 
godliness,  working,  as  it  does,  unconsciously  and  wdth 
sovereign  effect — this  it  is  which  forms  your  chil- 
dren to  God.  And,  if  this  be  wanting,  all  that  you 
may  do  beside,  will  be  as  likely  to  annoy  and  harden  as 
to  bless. 

4.  It  seems  to  be  a  proper  inference  from  the  doctrine 
I  have  exhibited,  that  Christian  parents  ought  to  speak 
freely  to  their  children,  at  times,  of  their  own  faults  and 
infirmities.  If  they  are  faithful,  if  they  live  as  Chris- 
tians, if  the  spirit  of  Christ  bears  rule  in  the  house,  they 
will  yet  have  faults,  and  they  ought  to  make  no  secret 
of  the  fact.  The  impression  should  be  made,  that  they 
themselves  are  struggling  with  infirmities ;  that  they  are 
humbled  under  a  sense  of  these  infirmities ;  that  there 
is  much  in  them  for  God  to  pardon,  much  for  their 
children  to  overlook,  or  even  to  forgive ;  and  that  God 
alone  can  assist  them  to  lead  themselves  and  their  family 
up  to  a  better  world.  Instead  of  lecturing  their  chil- 
dren, always,  on  their  peccadilloes  and  sins,  it  w^ould  be 
better,  sometimes,  to  give  a  lecture  on  their  own.  This, 
if  rightly  done,  would  attract  the  friendly  sympathy  of 
their  children,  guard  them  against  the  injurious  impres- 
sions they  make  when  they  trip  themselves,  and  unite 


120  THE    ORGANIC    UNITY 

the  wliole  family  in  a  common  struggle  heavenward. 
There  is  no  other  way  to  correct  the  mixture  of  evil 
you  will  blend  with  the  family  spirit,  but  to  deplore  it, 
and  make  it  an  acknowledged  truth,  that  you,  too,  are 
only  a  child  in  goodness.  But  if  you  take  a  throne  of 
papal  infallibility  in  your  family,  and  endeavor  to  fight 
out,  with  the  rod,  what  you  fail  in  by  your  misconduct, 
you  may  make  your  children  fear  you  and  hate  you, 
but  you  will  not  win  them  to  Christ.  Alas !  there  are 
too  many  Christian  families  that  are  only  little  pope- 
doms. The  rule  itself  is  tyranny — infallibility  assumed, 
then  maintained,  by  the  holy  inquisition  of  terror  and 
penal  chastisement !  God  will  not  smile  on  such  a  kind 
of  discipline. 

5.  It  is  evident  what  rule  should  regulate  the  soci- 
ety and  external  intercourse  of  children.  It  is  a  very 
great  mercy,  as  I  have  said,  that  the  children  of  a  bad 
or  irreligious  family  are  sometimes  permitted  to  be  in- 
mates elsewhere;  to  go  into  virtuous  and  Christian 
families,  where  a  better  spirit  reigns.  There  they  see, 
perhaps,  the  genuine  demonstrations  of  order,  of  purity, 
and  of  good  affections ;  they  hear  the  voice  of  prayer, 
they  come  where  the  spirit  of  heaven  breathes.  It  is  a 
new  world,  and  they  are  filled  with  new  impressions. 
So,  if  a  child  may  go  to  a  school  where  order,  right 
principle,  virtuous  manners,  and  the  love  of  knowledge 
reign,  and  find  a  respite  there  from  the  shiftlessness, 
vice,  and  brutality  at  home,  how  great  is  the  privilege ! 
In  this  view,  a  good  school  is  almost  the  only  mercy 
that  can  be  extended  to  the  hapless  sons  and  daughters 


OF    THE    FAMILY.  121 

of  vice.  Their  good — most  dismal  tliouglit ! — is  to  be 
delivered  from  their  home ;  to  escape  the  spirit  of  hell 
that  encompasses  their  helpless  age,  and  feel,  though  it 
be  but  a  few  hours  a  day,  the  power  of  another  spirit ! 

But  I  was  speaking  of  the  rule  to  be  observed  in  the 
society  of  children.  Let  every  Christian  beware  how 
he  makes  his  children  inmates  in  an  irreligious  family. 
It  will  do,  sometimes,  to  allow  the  children  of  an  irre- 
ligious family  to  be  inmates,  temporarily,  in  your  own. 
You  may  do  it  for  their  advantage ;  and  if  you  can  en- 
list the  hearts  of  your  children  in  the  merciful  inten- 
tions you  cherish,  it  may  even  be  a  good  exercise  for 
them.  But  it  is  a  very  different  thing  to  place  your 
children  within  the  atmosphere  of  another  house.  Send 
them  not  where  the  spirit  of  evil  reigns.  Understand 
how  plastic  their  nature  is,  how  easily  it  receives  the 
contagion  of  another  spirit.  You  yourselves  may  have 
intercourse  with  ungodly  persons ;  it  may  be  your  duty 
to  seek  it  for  their  benefit ;  but  you  may  well  be  cau- 
tious how  far  you  subject  your  children,  especially  in 
early  years,  to  the  intercourse  of  irreligious  families. 

And  what  shall  I  say  to  parents,  who  are  themselves 
irreligious  ?  Perhaps  you  make  it  your  boast  that  you 
give  your  children  their  liberty;  that  you  mean  to 
allow  them  to  be  just  as  religious  as  they  please.  And 
is  that  enough,  do  you  think,  to  discharge  your  duties 
to  them  ?  Is  it  enough  to  breathe  the  spirit  of  evil  and 
sin  into  them  and  around  them  every  hour,  to  give 
them  no  Christian  counsel,  to  train  them  up  in  a  prayer- 
less  house,  drill  them  into  conformity  with  all  your 


122  THE    ORGANIC    UNITY. 

worldly  ways,  and  tlien  say  that  you  allow  them  full 
liberty  to  be  Christians?  Having  them  under  your 
law,  determining  yourselves  that  organic  spirit,  which 
is  to  be  the  element,  the  very  breath  of  their  moral  ex- 
istence, will  you  then  boast  that  you  mean  to  allow 
them  to  be  as  virtuous  as  they  please  ?  Ah,  if  there  be 
any  argument,  which  might  compel  you  to  be  Chris- 
tians yourselves,  it  is  these  arguments  of  affection  that 
God  has  given  you.  But  if  you  will  not  be  Christians 
yourselves,  then,  at  least,  show  your  children  some  de- 
gree of  mercy,  by  delivering  them,  as  much  as  possible, 
from  yourselves!  Send  them,  as  often  as  you  may, 
where  a  better  spirit  reigns.  Make  them  inmates  with 
Christian  families,  as  you  have  opportunity.  Let  them 
go  where  they  will  hear  a  prayer  and  see  a  Christian 
Sabbath.  Send  them,  or  take  them  with  you,  to  the 
church  of  God,  and  the  Sabbath-school.  Give  them  a 
respite  often  from  the  family  spirit  and  the  organic  law 
of  the  house.  If  you  yourselves  will  not  fashion  them 
for  the  skies,  let  others,  more  faithful  than  you,  and 
more  merciful,  do  it  for  you. 


V. 


INFANT  BAPTISM,  HOW  DEVELOPED. 

"  For  the  promise  is  imto  you  and  to  your  children,  and  to  all  that  aro 
afar  off,  even  as  many  as  the  Lord  our  God  shall  call." — Acts,  ii.  39. 

It  is  a  matter  of  wonder,  witli  many  professed  disci- 
ples of  Jesus  in  our  time,  that  if  the  baptism  of  chil- 
dren and  their  qualified  introduction  into  the  church  is 
any  genuine  part  of  the  Christian  economy,  there  is  so 
little  authority  for  it,  by  express  mention  in  the  New 
Testament  writings.  And  yet,  over  opposite  to  this, 
it  is  quite  as  fair  a  subject  of  wonder  that  in  Peter's 
first  sermon,  on  the  day  of  Pentecost,  when  addressing 
only  the  adult  sinners  of  the  assembly,  in  terms  appro- 
priate to  their  age,  he  should  yet  have  given  out,  as  it 
were  unconsciously,  a  declaration  that  can  signify  noth- 
ing but  the  engagement  of  Christ,  in  his  new  and  more 
spiritual  economy,  to  identify  children  with  their  pa- 
rents, even  as  they  had  been  identified  in  the  coarser 
provisions  of  the  Old.  "  To  you  and  to  your  children," 
says  the  apostle,  and  here,  covertly  as  it  were  to  him- 
self, are  hid  infant  baptism,  infant  church  relations, 
potentially  present  but  as  yet  undeveloped,  even  in 
what  may  be  fitly  called  the  seed  sermon  of  the  Chris- 
tian church.  This  was  no  time  to  be  thinking  of  in- 
fants, or  children,  as  related  to  church  polity  ;  probably 


124  INFANT    BAPTISM, 

there  is  not  one  present  in  the  great  assembly.  It  will 
be  soon  enough  to  settle  the  church  position  of  chil- 
dren, when  the  question  rises  practically  afterwards. 
These  converted  pilgrims,  Parthians,  Medes,  Elamites, 
and  strangers  of  all  names,  may  not  even  so  much  as 
think  of  the  question  till  they  reach  their  homes  again. 
But  the  language,  we  can  see,  is  Jewish ;  language  of 
promise,  or  covenant,  only  with  a  Christian  addition — 
"  And  to  tEem  that  are  afar  off,  even  as  many  as  the 
Lord  our  God  shall  call " — and  Peter,  as  we  know,  did 
not  really  come  into  the  meaning  of  this  language  him- 
self till  years  after,  when  the  great  sheet  let  down  from 
heaven  three  times,  and  the  actual  ministering  to  a 
Gentile  convert,  showed  him  whither,  and  how  far  off, 
the  call  of  the  Lord  might  be  going,  in  these  times,  to 
run.  Let  it  not  surprise  us  then,  that  the  facts  of  in- 
fant baptism,  and  of  infant  church  relations,  covered, 
as  they  are,  by  Peter's  language  in  this  first  serrfion, 
are  still  not  yet  developed,  even  to  himself — any  more 
than  the  fact  of  Christ's  call  to  the  Gentiles. 

And  when  our  Baptist  brethren  reiterate  the  formula, 
"believe  and  be  baptized,"  "believe  and  be  baptized," 
which  they  assume  to  be  absolutely  conclusive  and  final 
on  the  question  of  infant  baptism  because  infants  can 
not  believe,  they  have  only  to  make  due  allowance 
for  the  fact  that  Christianity  must  needs  make  its  chief 
address,  at  the  outset,  to  adult  persons,  and  their  argu- 
ment vanishes.  Christianity  will  of  course  address  itself 
to  the  subjects  addressed ;  and,  telling  them  what  they 
must  do  to  be  saved,  it  will  not  of  course  tell  them,  at 


HOW    DEVELOPED.  125 

the  same  breath,  every  thing  else  that  is  fit  to  be 
known.  In  this  manner  its  language  was  naturally 
shaped,  for  a  considerable  time,  so  as  to  meet  only  the 
conditions  of  adult  minds.  When  at  length  it  shall 
begin  to  be  inquired,  what  is  the  condition  of  imma- 
ture, or  infant  minds?  it  will  be  soon  enough  to  say 
something  appropriate  to  them. 

Besides,  the  formula  has  another  side — "  He  that  be- 
lieveth  not  shall  be  damned."  Does  it  therefore  follow, 
because  it  is  so  continually  given  to  adults  as  the  fixed 
law  of  salvation — he  that  believeth  shall  be  saved,  and 
he  that  believeth  not  shall  be  damned — that  infants 
dying  in  infancy,  and  too  young  to  believe,  must  there- 
fore be  inevitably  damned  ?  Wo,  it  will  be  answered, 
even  by  our  Baptist  brethren  themselves ;  for  the  lan- 
guage referred  to  was  evidently  designed  only  for  adult 
persons,  and  is  of  cours^to  be  qualified  so  as  to  meet  the 
demands  of  reason,  when  we  come  to  the  case  of  child- 
hood. And  why  not  also  the  language  "  believe  and  be 
baptized?"  Say  not  that  the  child  is  not  old  enough 
to  believe,  and  therefore  can  not  be  baptized.  If  he  is 
not  old  enough  to  believe,  how  can  he  better  be  saved  ? 
Is  it  a  greater,  and  higher,  and  more  difficult  thing  to 
be  admitted  to  baptism,  than  to  be  admitted  to  eternal 
glory  ? 

Now  I  can  most  readily  admit  that  the  subject  of  in- 
fant baptism  is  not  as  definitely  mentioned  and  form- 
ally prescribed  in  the  New  Testament,  as  we  might, 
without  any  great  extravagance,  expect.  For  many 
will  never  notice  how  great  a  thing  it  is  for  Christianity 


126  INFANT    BAPTISM, 

to  pass  from  the  first  stage  of  mere  propagation,  to  the 
stage  of  a  fixed  institution.  What  worlds  of  modifi- 
cation, correction,  new  arrangement,  are  necessary  to 
the  transition,  they  have  never  observed.  They  see 
the  real  figure  of  Christianity  in  the  day  of  Pentecost, 
having  never  a  conception,  it  may  be,  that  this  figure  is 
most  intensely  occasional  and  casual,  and  the  whole 
scene  one  that  has  scarcely  a  vestige  of  Christian  in- 
stitution in  it. 

What  I  propose,  then,  is  to  go  over  some  of  the  inci- 
dents of  this  Pentecostal  scene  and  show  you  how  it 
will  drop  out  one  point  after  another,  as  Christianity 
becomes  a  fixed  institution ;  which  institutional  char- 
acter, again,  will,  by  a  necessary  law,  bring  in  other 
elements  whereby  to  shape  itself  and  complete  its 
organization. 

First  of  all,  we  are  delighted  here  at  the  picture 
given  of  a  new  form  of  society,  and  a  thing  so  beauti- 
ful, so  wonderfully  hopeful  and  peculiar,  we  are  ready 
to  think  must  be  the  very  essence  of  the  new  institu- 
tion itself  "And  all  that  believed  were  together  and 
had  all  things  common ;  and  sold  their  possessions  and 
goods  and  parted  them  to  all  men,  as  every  man  had 
need.  And  they,  continuing  with  one  accord  in  the 
temple  and  breaking  bread  from  house  to  house,  did 
eat  their  meat  with  gladness  and  singleness  of  heart, 
praising  God  and  having  favor  with  all  the  people. 
And  the  Lord  added  daily  to  the  church  such  as  should 
be  saved."  What  a  picture,  taken  as  a  mere  external 
description!     Saying  nothing  of  internal  experiences, 


HOW    DEVELOPED  127 

it  goes  to  the  simple  outward  demonstrations,  and  by 
these  it  paints  the  spring-time,  or  first  blossoming  of 
the  Christian  love.  The  beauty  of  the  scene  consists 
in  the  fact,  that  the  disciples  hardly  know,  as  yet,  what 
their  love  signifies.  Assembled  as  pilgrims,  from  all 
parts  of  the  world,  the  Christian  love  has  fallen  upon 
them,  and  they  find,  what  is  altogether  new  and  strange, 
that  rich  and  poor,  honorable  and  base,  despite  of  all 
distinctions,  they  love  one  another  as  brethren  !  Not 
knowing  what  to  make  of  it,  or,  apparently,  whether 
they  are  hereafter  to  have  any  thing  to  do  but  to  love 
one  another,  they  give  themselves  wholly  up  to  love, 
as  children  to  a  play — come  what  will,  they  are  all 
agreed  in  this,  that  they  want  only  fellowship  with  each 
other,  fellowship  in  doctrine,  fellowship  in  praise,  fel- 
lowship in  bread,  and  why  not  also  in  goods  ? 

How  sad,  that  a  scene  so  amiable  and  lovely  could 
not  continue,  and  that  all  Christian  disciples,  to  the  end 
of  the  world,  could  not  fall  into  the  same  delightful 
picture  in  their  conduct !  Just  as  sad,  I  answer,  as  it 
is  that  children  can  not  always  be  children  ;  for  these 
are  the  children  of  love,  acting  out  the  simple  instinct 
of  love,  and  wholly  ignorant,  as  yet,  of  the  cares, 
labors,  and  confused  struggles,  in  which  their  Christian 
spirit  is  to  have  its  trial.  Doubtless  we  are  to  regret, 
as  a  loss,  whatever  departure  we  may  have  suffered 
from  the  spirit  of  these  first  disciples  ;  for  the  spirit  of 
Christian  life  is  one  and  the  same,  in  all  diversities  of 
form  and  conduct.  But  it  is  plain  to  any  one,  who  will 
exercise  the  least  consideration,  that  it  was  just  as  im- 


128  INFANT    BAPTISM, 

possible  to  perpetuate  these  first  demonstrations,  as  it 
is  to  preserve  the  infantile  airs  of  children  after  child- 
hood is  passed,  carrying  them  still  on  through  the 
sturdy  toils  and  cares  of  a  mature  age.  The  moment 
we  leave  these  first  scenes,  following  the  pilgrims  off 
to  their  homes,  see  them  entering  into  the  duties  of 
home,  see  the  Christian  churches  getting  body  and  form 
in  so  many  places  and  becoming  incorporated  as  fixed 
elements  of  human  society,  we  shall  discover  that 
almost  all  the  modes  and  hospitalities  of  the  Pente- 
costal society  are  inevitably  discontinued. 

.  But  we  must  go  deeper  into  the  history  and  show, 
by  distinct  specification,  how  intensely  casual  much 
that  belongs  to  the  scene  of  the  Pentecost  was  even 
designed  to  be,  and  how  many  things  are  to  be  added 
to  give  the  new  gospel  a  permanently  instituted  life. 
We  begin  with  the  things  casual  that  were  designed  to 
cease. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Spirit  was  here  to  be  inau- 
gurated, as  a  Divine  Force,  entered  systematically  into 
the  world,  to  work  subjectively  in  men  all  the  charac- 
ters of  love  and  beauty  that  are  shown  objectively  in 
the  life  of  Jesus.  He  is  to  be,  in  other  words,  a  per- 
petual indwelling  Christ  in  men's  hearts.  In  times 
more  ancient,  good  men  had  been  wont  to  pray  for 
spiritual  help  in  a  manner  correspondent,  but  now  the 
kingdom  of  Help,  that  kingdom  which  is  righteousness 
and  peace  and  joy  in  the  Holy  Ghost,  is  to  be  set  up 
as  a  Christly  dispensation.  But,  at  the  beginning,  there 
must  be  something  done  before  the  senses,  to  waken 


HOW    DEVELOrKTi.  129 

sensuous  impressions.  Otherwise,  whatever  power  the 
Spirit  might  exert  in  the  recesses  of  the  human  soul, 
it  would  probably  occur  to  no  one  to  refer  the  effects 
wrought  to  a  Divine  Agency.  Hence  the  wondrous 
character  of  the  scene,  which  here  bursts  upon  the 
world — a  sound  from  heaven,  a  rushing,  mighty  wind 
sweeping  through  the  hall,  lambent  tips  of  fire  resting 
on  the  heads  of  the  assembly,  wondrous  utterances  or 
tongues. 

Now,  the  physical  incidents  of  this  scene  had  noth- 
ing to  do  with  its  substantial  import,  save  as  they  were 
added  to  suggest  the  idea  of  a  Divine  Agency.  They 
hold  the  same  mechanical  relation,  as  a  vehicle,  to  the 
Spirit,  that  the  human  nature  of  Jesus  held  to  the 
Divine  Word.  They  are  the  bod^,  the  sensible  show 
of  the  Spirit,  the  smoke  by  which  the  fire  was  revealed. 
So  of  the  tongues.  They  were  the  sign  of  a  power 
that  was  playing  the  action  of  the  inner  man,  and  mak- 
ing audible,  as  it  were,  the  activity  within,  of  a  Divine 
Influence.  All  these,  like  the  miraculous  gifts  so  con- 
spicuous in  the  subsequent  history,  were  manifestations 
of  the  Spirit,  given  to  profit  withal ;  but  being  only 
accidents  or  exponents,  were,  of  course,  to  be  discon- 
tinued, when  the  doctrine  of  a  spiritual  influence  from 
God  was  sufl&ciently  developed — discontinued  and  never 
restored,  unless  perhaps  in  cases  where  the  sense  of  the 
Spirit  is  so  nearly  lost  as  to  require  a  kind  of  new  de- 
velopment. Accordingly  as  these  fall  off,  the  spir- 
itual influence  inaugurated  by  such  tokens,  may  be 
expected,  for  much  the  same  reasons,  to  move  upon  the 


130  INFANT    BAPTISM 

world  in  a  less  imposing  method ;  to  remit,  in  some 
degree,  the  extraordinary,  and,  as  life  is  itself  ordinary, 
become,  to  the  human  spirit,  what  the  air  is  to  the 
body — a  Perpetual  Element  of  inbreathing  love;  to 
dwell  in  the  families,  to  follow  the  individual,  and 
whisper  holy  thoughts  in  solitary  places  and  silent 
hours.  He  is  to  fill  the  world,  and  be  a  Spirit  of  Life 
and  love,  present  to  all  human  hearts.  He  will  pro- 
duce the  same  exercises,  produced  in  the  first  disciples, 
in  the  scene  of  the  Pentecost.  Sometimes,  too,  he  will 
glorify  himself  in  scenes  of  social  effect  and  power. 
But  the  grand  reality  revealed  is  an  Abiding  Spirit — 
not  a  Scene  Spirit,  but  an  Abiding  Spirit — accordantly 
with  Christ's  own  promise — "  He  shall  give  you 
another  Comforter,  that  he  may  abide  with  you  for- 
ever." When  the  sound,  therefore,  which  then  shook 
the  air  is  hushed  to  be  heard  no  more ;  when  the  rush-* 
ing,  mighty  wind  that  typified  so  powerfully  the  breath 
of  the  arriving  Spirit  of  God  has  dropped  into  calm ; 
when  the  fire-tips  have  ceased  to  burn  on  the  heads 
of  all  assemblies,  and  all  the  Pentecostal  signs  are  over ; 
then  is  there  seen  to  be  left  as  a  result,  the  fixed  con- 
viction of  a  Jesus  unlocalized,  a  Spirit  of  Jesus  pres- 
ent in  all  places,  working  in  all  hearts,  present,  in  con- 
scious manifestation,  to  all  discerning  souls,  as  the  life 
of  their  life.  How  very  casual,  in  this  view,  is  the 
scene  of  the  Pentecost.  And  that  is  very  soon  dis- 
covered. One  year  afterwards,  not  even  the  persons 
present  in  that  scene  look  upon  it  as  being,  in  any  sense, 
a  properly  institutional  element  of  Christianity.     The 


HOW    DEVELOPED  131 

Spirit  inaugurated  is  institutional,  the  life  of  all  holy 
institutions,  but  nothing  in  the  forms  of  the  scene  is 
regarded  as  having  a  perpetual  character. 

Again,  it  will  be  found  that  the  preaching  of  the 
day  of  Pentecost,  powerful  as  the  sermon  of  Peter  ap- 
pears to  have  been  upon  the  assembly  at  that  time, 
was  not  such,  either  in  style  or  substance,  as  could 
be  continued  after  the  first  day  or  two  of  the  gos- 
pel proclamation,  and  was  in  fact  superseded,  in  a  very 
short  time,  by  the  sturdier  methods  of  argument  and 
instruction.  We  see  this  in  all  the  epistles,  and  as  truly 
in  those  of  Peter  as  of  Paul.  The  infant  churches  had 
scarcely  begun  to  be  institutions,  before  this  change  was 
apparent. 

And  yet  we  have  many,  in  our  own  time,  who  do 
not  appear  to  see  this,  even  though  the  manner  of 
Peter's  sermon  is  so  completely  gone  by,  that  one  can 
hardly  imagine  how  it  had  any  power  at  all.  "  See," 
they  say,  "how  simple  it  was,  how  easy  of  apprehen- 
sion— nothing  but  a  recitation  of  facts — and  then  what 
power  it  had!"  As  if  the  telling,  over  and  over,  of 
old  news,  announcing  again  facts  that  have  been 
known  to  every  reader  of  the  New  Testament  from  his 
childhood  up,  as  familiarly  as  he  knows  his  right  hand, 
could  have  the  same  value  and  be  means  to  ends  for 
producing  the  same  effects !  Most  of  us  have  a  better 
understanding  of  the  subject,  perceiving,  as  clearly  as 
possible,  that  while  Peter's  sermon  was  good  for  the 
occasion,  it  was  good  for  almost  no  occasion  since.  It 
was  one  of  the  first  things,  of  which  there  can  not,  by 


132  INFANT    BAPTISM. 

the  supposition,  be  many.  A  camp  meeting,  or  a  band 
of  pilgrims  gathered  for  a  single  week,  a  thousand 
miles  from  home,  may  well  enough  desire  such  kind 
of  preaching  as  will  serve  the  zest  of  the  occasion. 
But  it  is  no  design  of  Christianity  to  get  by  the  need 
of  intelligence,  and  fashion  a  sanctity  that  has  no  fel- 
lowship with  dignity.  A  regularly  instituted  Christian 
congregation,  who  are  to  live  and  grow  up  on  the 
same  spot,  from  age  to  age,  it  has  long  ago  been  dis- 
covered, must  be  compelled  to  gird  up  the  loins  of  their 
mind.  They  must  reject  the  mere  gospel  drinks  and 
betake  themselves  to  meat.  Their  life,  it  will  be  found, 
depends,  not  on  scenes  and  machineries,  not  on  storms 
and  paroxysms,  but  on  a  capacity  rather  to  receive  in- 
struction ;  to  be  exercised  in  high  argument,  to  bear 
with  patience  the  discovery  how  little  they  know,  and 
on  a  good  healthful  appetite  for  Christian  food.  To  be 
able  to  burn  in  a  fire  decides  nothing.  They  must  know 
how  to  supply  the  fuel  of  devotion  out  of  their  own 
exercise  in  God's  truth.  They  must  love  a  ministry 
of  doctrine,  or  intellectual  teaching.  Neither  is  it  doc- 
trine, as  many  fancy,  when  they  complain  of  a  want 
of  doctrinal  preaching,  to  get  a  few  stale  dogmas  im- 
pounded in  the  head,  or  stuck  in  the  brain,  as  dead  flies 
in  ointment :  all  the  rich  treasures  of  thought,  and  high 
motive,  and  solemn  contemplation,  garnered  up  in 
God's  word,  must  be  brought  out,  seen,  understood,  and 
fall  upon  the  soul,  as  manna  from  the  skies.  Like 
manna,  too,  it  must  be  the  supply  of  to-day  only.  A 
new  shower  must  be  gathered  for  to-morrow,  and  the 


HOW    DEVELOPED  133 

mind  of  tlie  people  must  be  kept  in  active  and  pro- 
gressive motion. 

Such  a  kind  of  preaching  will  feed  the  intelligence 
of  the  hearers,  and  raise  ujd  pillars  in  the  churches. 
And  here  is  the  great  distinction  between  the  preaching 
proper  to  the  scene  of  the  Pentecost,  and  that  of  an 
established  Christian  congregation.  It  is  the  difference 
between  Peter,  giving  news  to  the  pilgrims,  and  Paul  of- 
ering  some  "things  hard  to  be  understood," to  churches 
of  organized  disciples.  Such  preaching  is  required,  in 
an  established  congregation,  as  will  exert  an  educating 
power.  And  yet  it  will,  in  that  way,  be  a  converting 
power,  as  efficacious  as  any  other,  if  only  it  is  expected 
to  be.  When  the  community  is  more  deeply  moved 
by  spiritual  things,  it  will,  of  course,  vary  its  tone  and 
its  subjects  to  suit  the  occasion,  perhaps  multiply  its 
efforts ;  but  never  as  being  in  a  hurry,  lest  the  grace 
of  the  occasion  may  be  capriciously  withdrawn,  never 
over-preaching,  or  preaching  out,  as  if  nothing  were  to 
be  done  by  thought  in  the  hearers,  but  all  by  the  power 
of  a  commotion  round  them;  for  it  is  not  the  same 
thing  to  fall  out  of  dignity  and  self-possession  as  to  get 
rid  of  sin,  neither  is  a  fever  or  a  whirlwind  any  proper 
instrument  of  sanctification.  Mournful  proofs  have  we 
to  the  contrary.  Better  is  it  to  reserve  a  power  for  the 
ordinary,  even  when  we  are  in  the  extraordinary.  It 
is  not  wisdom  to  overwork  the  harvest,  so  that  we  have 
no  strength  left  for  the  bread.  Rather  let  the  preacher 
believe  in  the  Abiding  Spirit,  and  count  upon  a  kind 
of  perpetual  harvest.     Let  him  think  to  gain  many  to 


134  INFANT    BAPTISM 

Christ  imperceptibly,  by  keeping  alive  the  interest  of 
God's  truth,  and  letting  it  distill  upon  the  hearers  as  a 
dew,  and  through  them  on  the  rising  families.  What- 
ever he  gains  in  this  way  will  assuredly  remain ;  for  it 
is  not  the  birth  of  an  occasion,  but  of  quiet  conviction. 
It  partakes  the  nature  of  habit.  It  is  the  fruit  of  a 
godly  training.  Seldom,  therefore,  will  it  fall  away,  or 
disappoint  expectation. 

There  is  yet  another  class  of  incidents,  or  demonstra- 
tions, in  the  scene  of  the  Pentecost,  which  are  referable 
to  the  fact  that  these  first  converts  are  not  at  home,  and 
all  these  must,  of  course,  be  modified,  or  discontinued 
by  their  simple  return.  They  are  pilgrims  at  the 
feasts;  Parthians,  Medes,  Elamites — Jewish  emigrants, 
who  have  returned  from  every  most  distant  clime  of  the 
world,  to  enjoy  the  great  festivals  of  their  religion. 

Their  property,  their  business,  and,  more  commonly, 
their  families,  are  left  behind.  Many  of  them  are  poor 
persons,  wholly  unable  to  support  the  expense  even  of 
a  short  stay  at  Jerusalem.  The  others  can  not,  of  course, 
leave  them  to  suffer.  So  they  divide  their  resources 
with  the  poor ;  and  some,  who  belong  at  Jerusalem,  are 
moved  by  the  overflowing  love  of  Christ  in  their  hearts, 
to  part  with  their  whole  property,  that  they  may  re- 
lieve the  necessities  of  the  brotherhood.  Only  a  few 
days  or  weeks  are  thus  spent  together.  Probably, 
within  three  months,  they  are,  every  man,  at  home  in 
his  own  house,  providing  for  his  own  family,  out  of  the 
increase  of  his  own  industry  and  property.  During 
their  short  stay  at  Jerusalem,  they  had  nothing  to  do 


HOW    DEVELOPED  185 

but  to  exercise  their  religion.  Accordingly  they  gave 
themselves  wholly  up  to  it.  Now  the  religious  occasion 
is  past ;  the  extraordinary  is  over,  and  the  ordinary  has 
returned.  By  this  time,  they  have  learned,  probably, 
and  received  it  even  as  a  Christian  maxim,  that  one 
who  does  not  provide  for  Ms  oivn,  denies  the  faith,  and 
is  worse  than  an  infidel. 

Again,  these  first  disciples  had  not  yet  been  called  to 
blend  their  piety  with  the  common  cares  and  duties  of 
life.  Quite  likely,  they  did  not,  for  some  time,  consider 
whether  they  should  hereafter  have  any  thing  more  to 
do  with  these  gross  and  earthly  callings.  But  we,  at 
least,  have  learned  what  they  must  also  have  learned 
very  soon,  that  though  we  can  not  live  by  bread  alone, 
it  is  yet  difficult  to  live  without  bread.  We  have 
learned  that  the  very  church  of  God  itself  is  perpetu- 
ated, in  part,  by  industry  and  production,  that  it  can 
not  live  by  expenditure,  that  we  have  something  there- 
fore to  do,  besides  breaking  bread  from  house  to  house ; 
six  days  to  labor,  a  spectacle  of  thrift  to  present  to 
mankind,  as  a  proof  that  Christian  virtue  has  its  bless- 
ings. "We  must  shine  as  good  citizens,  neighbors,  pa- 
rents, friends.  Life  is  no  mere  camp-meeting  scene; 
but  the  greatest  of  all  Christian  attainments,  we  find,  is 
precisely  that  which  the  first  disciples  had  not  yet 
thought  of,  the  learning  how  to  blend  the  spiritual  and 
economical  or  industrial  together ;  to  live  in  the  world, 
and  not  be  of  it ;  to  labor  in  earthly  things,  and  main- 
tain a  conversation  in  heaven ;  to  unite  thrift  with  char- 
ity, and  separate  gain  from  greediness ;  to  use  property, 


136  INFANT    BAPTISM 

and  not  worship  it;  to  prepare  comfort,  without  pursa- 
ing  pleasure.  For  it  is,  by  just  this  kind  of  trial,  that 
all  spiritual  strength  is  gotten,  and  the  Christian  life 
becomes  a  light  to  men.  i- 

Having  glanced,  in  this  manner,  at  some  of  the  types 
and  conditions  of  the  scene  of  Pentecost  that  were,  and 
were  inevitably  to  be,  discontinued,  let  us  notice  briefly, 
some  of  the  matters  that  must  also  as  inevitably  be 
added  in  the  process  by  which  Christianity  becomes  an 
institution. 

Thus,  first  of  all,  as  Christ  and  his  evangelists  had 
given  the  new  facts  to  the  world,  so  it  was  inevitable 
that  a  grand  process  of  thinking  or  mental  elaboration 
should  begin  to  work  out  the  import  or  doctrinal  inter- 
pretation of  those  facts.  In  this  process,  diverse  opin- 
ions, formulas,  sects,  controversies,  must  be  developed — 
consequently  new  modes  of  duty. 

The  simplicity  of  mere  love,  displayed,  as  it  was,  in 
the  first  scenes  of  the  gospel,  could  not  continue,  how- 
ever desirable  it  may  seem.  Men  must  think,  as  well 
as  love,  and  thought  must  make  its  inroads  on  mere  re- 
lations of  feeling.  And  thus  a  long  process  of  forming 
and  reforming  must  go  on,  till  the  Christ  of  the  head 
becomes  as  catholic  as  the  Christ  of  the  heart.  Mean- 
time, all  must  stand  for  the  truth,  and  there  must  be  no 
countenance  given  to  error.  The  happy  days  of  Chris- 
tian childhood  are  left  far  behind,  and  every  church  is 
set  in  relations  of  duty  that  are  partly  antagonistic.  It 
must  take  a  form  required  by  its  new  necessities.     What 


HOW    DEVELOPED  187 

to  do  for  the  truth,  whom  to  acknowledge,  when  to  re- 
sist and  when  to  forbear,  how  much  consequence  to 
attribute  to  opinions,  over  what  errors  to  spread  the 
mantle  of  charity,  how  to  maintain  a  polemic  attitude 
in  the  unity  of  the  Spirit — these  are  the  grave  questions 
that  are  to  occupy  ministers  and  churches,  and,  in  the 
right  exercise  of  which,  they  are  to  justify  their  Chris- 
tian name.  And  on  this  will  depend  the  power  of 
religion,  quite  as  much  as  on  the  duties  done  to  those 
who  are  aliens  and  unbelievers. 

Next  we  pass  on  to  a  field  where  the  new  creating 
power  of  the  gospel  is  displayed  yet  more  distinctly. 
The  first  disciples  had  no  thought  but  to  swim  in  the 
strange  joy  they  felt,  as  forgiven  of  God  and  filled  with 
the  love  of  Jesus.  Of  Christianity,  as  a  fixed  institu- 
tion, taking  the  whole  society  of  man  into  its  bosom, 
and  becoming  the  school  of  the  race,  they  had  probably, 
at  first,  no  conception.  Passing  thence  to  the  modern 
Christian  faith,  how  great  is  the  change !  What  a  va- 
riety of  means,  instruments  and  arrangements  has  it 
created,  maintaining  all  from  age  to  age,  by  a  sacrifice, 
compared  with  which,  the  casual  contributions  to  poor 
saints  at  Jerusalem  were  far  less  significant  in  their 
effects,  and,  perhaps,  not  more  to  be  commended,  as 
proofs  of  a  Christian  spirit. 

First,  a  house  of  worship ;  and,  in  order  to  this,  the 
new  spiritual  life  must  become  a  holder  of  real  estate, 
and  be  acknowledged  as  such  in  the  laws.  To  make  the 
place  worthy  of  the  cause,  genius  and  taste  are  to  be  called 
into  exercise,  and  a  new  Christian  art  developed. 


138  INFANT    BAPTISM 

To  maintain  expenses  and  repairs,  and  collect  and 
disburse  cliarities,  there  must  be  officers  created,  such  as 
deacons  and  committees  of  various  kinds,  and  this  re- 
quires elections,  bye-laws,  records,  and  a  full  organized 
institutional  state. 

Mere  forms  and  sacraments  being  insufficient,  preach- 
ers of  the  word  must  be  carefully  trained  for  the  service, 
and  installed  therein,  to  feed  the  intelligence  of  the 
flock,  and  lead  them  in  the  truth.  Their  official  rights 
and  duties  must  be  ascertained,  and,  correspondently, 
the  rights  and  duties  of  the  flock — matters  all  how  dis- 
tant from  the  scene  of  the  Pentecost ! 

The  times  and  forms  of  worship  need  to  be  settled ; 
for,  whether  a  liturgy  is  used  or  not,  no  organic  action 
can  be  maintained  without  forms  of  some  kind,  to  serve 
as  laws  of  concert  and  rules  of  order. 

Christian  music,  as  a  new  art,  must  be  created,  and 
the  children  and  youth  must  be  trained  therein,  so  that 
all  may  bear  their  part  in  the  worship,  and  the  worship 
exercise  and  inspire  a  devout  feeling  in  all. 

There  must  be  a  punctual  and  regular  attendance 
somehow  established  and  made  obligatory ;  for  the  habit 
of  worship  is  necessary,  to  its  value,  as  a  power  over 
character.  Hence  there  must  be  a  common  responsi- 
bility— all  must  be  enlisted.  There  must  be  a  church 
spirit,  and,  in  order  to  this,  a  fraternal  spirit  in  the 
members,  verified  by  mutual  sympathy  and  aid  under 
the  common  burdens  of  life — a  kind  of  service,  I  will 
add,  which  is  often  far  more  beneficent  than  a  commu- 
nity of  goods  would  be ;  for  this  latter  might  be  only  a 


HOW    DEVELOPED.  139 

premium  given  to  idleness,  while  the  other  is  but  a  good 
encouragement  to  the  ingenuous  struggles  of  industry. 
There  must,  however,  be  some  Christian  provision  for 
the  poor,  that  they  also  may  have  their  part  in  the 
Christian  flock,  and  the  blessings  of  charity  descend 
upon  it  and  dwell  in  it. 

Nor  is  the  article  of  dress,  in  a  Christian  assembly, 
too  insignificant  to  be  a  subject  of  care.  Probably  no 
one  had  a  thought  of  this  in  the  Pentecostal  assembly ; 
but  we  find  the  apostles,  not  long  after,  giving  serious 
lectures  to  the  disciples  upon  their  dress.  Dress  and 
manners,  manners  and  morals,  morals  and  piety,  are  all 
connected  by  an  intimate  or  secret  law.  A  people, 
therefore,  who  are  careful  to  appear  before  God,  in  a 
well-chosen,  modest,  and  appropriate  dress — one  that  is 
neither  careless  nor  ostentatious,  one  that  indicates  so- 
briety, neatness,  good  sense,  and  a  desire  to  be  approved 
of  God  more  than  to  be  seen  of  men — will  avoid  barba- 
rous improprieties  of  every  sort.  Their  manner  will 
express  reverence  to  God.  What  they  express,  they 
will  be  likely  to  feel ;  and  if  they  become  true  disciples 
of  Christ,  as  there  is  greater  reason  to  hope,  their  man- 
ner will  huve  a  nicer  propriety,  and  their  whole  de- 
meanor will  be  more  thoughtful,  consistent,  and  lovely. 

It  may,  by-and-bye,  become  evident  that,  in  order 
to  maintain  the  full  power  of  religion,  and  to  gain 
the  neglected  youth  or  children,  and  such  children  as 
would  grow  up  otherwise  in  the  power  of  vice,  that  a 
parish  school  must  be  instituted,  as  in  Scotland,  in  con- 
nection with  every  church.     And  then,  at  a  much  later 


140  INFANT    BAPTISM 

day,  it  may  become  evident  that  Sunday-scliools  require 
to  be  instituted  in  the  same  way,  and  that  these,  enlist- 
ing the  more  capable  and  devoted  of  the  churches  in 
Christian  studies,  and  good  works — works,  that  is,  of 
teaching  and  attention  to  the  poor — are  finally  regarded 
every  where,  though  wholly  unknown  to  the  apostles 
and  the  Pentecostal  assembly,  as  being  among  the  best 
means  for  the  training  of  a  practically  Christian,  charac- 
ter, and  the  gathering  in  of  the  outcast  families  to  God. 
So  far  we  proceed  without  difficulty ;  all  these  things, 
though  never  preached  by  apostles,  must  finally  come, 
we  perceive,  as  outgrowths  of  the  Christian  church. 
Pentecostal  incidents  will  disappear,  and  these  will  as 
certainly  grow  apace  in  their  time. 

But  the  particular  point  for  which  I  have  drawn  this 
sketch  has  been  purposely  left  behind.  Infant  baptism, 
the  relation  of  the  seminal  and  undeveloped  first  period 
of  human  existence  to  Christ  and  his  flock,  that  which 
appears  only  implicitly  in  the  sermon  of  Peter,  on  the 
day  of  Pentecost — where  is  this,  and  what  is  to  come, 
in  the  way  of  development,  here  ?  There  was  no  reason, 
or  even  room,  among  the  scenes  of  the  PenteTjost,  for  so 
much  as  thinking  on  this  subject  of  infants  and  their 
church  relations,  and  scarcely  more  for  a  considerable 
time  afterward.  It  could  not  become  a  subject  of  atten- 
tion, until  the  church  itself  began  to  settle  into  forms 
of  order  and  structural  organization ;  and  how  soon 
that  came  to  pass  we  do  not  definitely  know.  It  should 
therefore  be  no  subject  of  wonder  that  infant  baptism, 


HOW    DEVELOPED  141 

figures  somewliat  indistinctly,  for  so  long  a  time  at 
least ;  and  scarcely  more,  that  it  shows  itself  only  by  im- 
plication and  a  kind  of  tacit  development,  for  a  brief 
time  afterwards. 

Furthermore,  if  it  came  to  pass  by  a  transference 
of  Jewish  ideas  into  Christian  spheres,  Jewish  modes 
and  conditions  into  the  Christian  order  and  economy — 
just  as  Peter's  Jewish  language,  when  he  said,  in  his  Pen- 
tecostal speech,  "to  you  and  to  your  children,"  finally 
came  back  to  him  in  its  Christian  power, — it  would  make 
no  bold  and  staring  figure  any  where.  If  the  Christian 
teachers  looked  to  see  all  the  better  mercies  of  the  old 
economy  transferred  into  the  Christian,  and  exalted 
there  into  some  higher  and  more  perfect  meaning,  we 
ought  certainly  not  to  expect  any  debate,  or  any  thing 
but  a  silent,  scarcely  conscious  flow  of  transition,  when 
infants  are  taken  to  be  with  their  parents,  in  the  church, 
the  covenant,  the  Christian  Israel  of  their  faith.  And 
in  just  this  way  the  defect  of  any  bold  declarations  on 
the  subject  of  infant  baptism  in  the  writings  of  the 
New  Testament,  and  the  fact  that  it  appears  only  in  a 
few  historic  glimpses,  and  occasional  modes  of  speech 
that  are  subtle  implications  of  the  fact,  is  suf&ciently 
accounted  for. 

But  we  are  inquiring  after  the  mode  in  which  this 
rite  became  an  accepted  element  of  the  Christian  organ- 
ization, and  a  part  of  the  church  practice,  as  we  cer- 
tainly know  that  it  did  at  sometime  afterward.  Peter 
probably  conceived  as  little  what  his  language  might 
infer  respecting  it,  as  he  certainly^  did,  what  hidden 


142  INFANT    BAPTISM 

import  there  was  in  his  testimony,  by  tlie  same  words, 
of  a  grace  to  tlie  Gentiles ;  for  lie  spoke  in  prophetic  ex- 
altation, as  the  ancient  prophets  did,  not  knowing  what 
the  spirit  of  Christ  that  was  in  them  did  signify.  But 
suppose  one  of  these  adult  converts  at  the  Pentecost  to 
have  set  off,  after  the  few  happy  weeks  of  his  sojourn 
are  ended,  for  his  home  in  some  remote  region  of  Ara- 
bia, Parthia,  or  Greece.  He  carries  Christ  with  him,  he 
is  a  new  man,  filled  with  a  strange  joy,  burning  with  a 
strange,  all-sacrificing  love  to  the  cause  of  his  new 
Master,  and  to  every  sinner  of  mankind.  He  begins  to 
preach  the  Christ  he  loves  to  his  friends,  tells  them  all 
he  knows  of  the  new  gospel,  speaks  to  them  as  one 
whom  Christ  has  endowed  with  power  to  speak.  He 
gathers  a  little  circle,  which  we  may  call  a  church, 
around  him,  perhaps  converts  a  little  obscure  synagogue 
into  a  church.  He  knows  that  he  himself  was  bap- 
tized as  a  token  of  his  faith,  and  he  has  heard,  a  thou- 
sand times  repeated,  Christ's  word,  "he  that  believeth 
and  is  baptized,"  "except  a  man  be  born  of  water  and 
of  the  Spirit,"  and  he  does  not  scruple  to  baptize  all  his 
new  fellow  disciples.  Then  comes  the  question,  what 
of  the  families  ?  what  of  the  infants  we  have,  who  are 
not  old  enough  to  believe?  This,  on  the  supposition 
that  he  had  heard  nothing  of  infant  baptism  before  he 
left  Jerusalem,  which  may  or  may  not  be  true.  But  he 
has  heard  the  whole  story  of  Christ's  life  many  times 
over,  including  the  fact  of  his  beautiful  interest  in 
children,  and  his  declaration — "of  such  is  the  kingdom." 
He  recollects  also  the  ancient  religion  of  his  people : 


HOW    DEVELOPED  143 

how  it  identiiied  always  the  children  with  the  fathers, 
and  included  them  in  the  covenant  of  the  fathers,  rais- 
ing doubtless  the  question,  whether  the  gospel  in  its  no- 
bler, wider  generosity  and  completer  grace,  would  fall 
short  even  of  the  old  religion  in  its  tenderness  to  the 
family  affections,  and  its  provisions  for  the  religious 
unity  of  families.  And  just  here,  we  will  suppose,  the 
words  of  Peter,  in  that  first  sermon  flash  on  his  recol- 
lection— "  For  the  promise  is  to  you  and  to  your  chil- 
dren." They  meant  almost  nothing,  it  may  be,  when 
they  were  spoken,  but  how  full  and  clear  the  meaning 
they  now  take.  It  is  like  a  revelation.  The  doubt 
struggling  in  his  bosom  is  over,  the  question  is  settled. 
"My  children,"  he  says,  "are  with  me,  one  with  me  in 
my  faith,  included  with  me  in  all  my  titles  and  hopes,  and 
as  I  came  in,  out  of  the  defilements  of  sin,  and  was  bap- 
tized in  token  of  my  cleansing,  so  too  are  they  to  share 
my  baptism  and  be  heirs  together  with  me  in  the  grace 
of  life. 

Thus  instructed,  he  will  baptize  his  children,  and 
make  his  religion  a  strictly  family  gi-ace,  expecting  them 
to  grow  up  in  it ;  others  also  consenting  with  him  in  the 
same  conclusion,  and  offering  their  children  to  God  in 
the  same  manner.  And,  as  the  result,  they  will  no 
more  be  Christians  with  families,  but  Christian  families — 
all  together  in  the  church  of  God.  In  this  manner  the 
Pentecost  itself,  when  the  seeds  that  are  in  it  are  devel- 
oped, will  almost  certainly  issue  the  adult  baptism  there 
begun,  the  baptism  of  the  three  thousand,  in  the  com- 
mon baptism  of  the  house. 


144  INFANT    BAPTISM 

And  here  we  have,  in  small,  just  what  would  most 
naturally  take  place  in  the  development  of  Christian- 
ity itself.  Taken  as  connected  with  its  own  precedent 
history  and  preparations,  the  church  could  hardly  be 
held  back  from  infant  baptism,  except  by  some  specific 
revelation. 


VI 

APOSTOLIC  AUTHOEITY  OF  INFANT  BAPTISM. 

"And  I  baptized  also  the  household  of  Stephanas." — 1  Corinthians^  i.  16. 

We  have  traced  the  conditions  under  which  infant 
baptism  would  almost  certainly  be  developed.  But  we 
do  not  leave  the  question  here.  We  have  many  and 
distinct  evidences  for  the  rite,  which  are  abundantly  de- 
cisive ;  some  from  the  nature  of  the  family  state,  some 
from  the  New  Testament,  and  some  from  the  subse- 
quent history  of  the  church.  These  I  will  now  under- 
take to  present  in  the  briefest  manner  possible.     And 

1.  The  organic  unity  of  the  family  makes  a  ground  for 
it,  and  sets  it  in  terms  of  rational  respect.  The  child  that 
is  born,  is  really  not  born,  in  the  higher  sense  of  that 
term,  till  he  has  breathed  a  long  time.  He  does  not  live 
in  his  own  will,  but  is  in  the  will  and  life  of  his  parents. 
To  bring  him  forward  into  his  own  will  and  responsi- 
bility is  the  problem  of  years.  He  is  in  the  matrix 
still  of  parental  character,  where  all  the  graces,  faiths, 
prayers,  promises,  of  the  parents  are  his  also.  He  lives 
and  breathes  in  them,  and  is  of  them,  almost  as  truly  as 
they  are  of  themselves.  What  we  call  the  house,  is  the 
organic  life  that  grows  him  as  a  mind  or  agent,  tempers 
him,  works  him  into  his  habits,  fashions  him  as  by  a  pre- 


146  APOSTOLIC     AUTHORITY 

cedent  power  to  be  born,  and  finally  take  dominion  of 
himself.  Why  then  should  religion  make  no  recogni- 
tion of  a  fact  so  profoundly  religious  ?  Why  not  as- 
sume that  the  child  is  just  where  he  is;  in  the  faith  of 
the  house,  to  grow  up  there  ?  It  would  even  be  a  sup- 
position against  nature  to  suppose  that  he  will  not.  It 
is  very  true  that  he  may  not,  because  the  faith  of  the 
house  is  no  faith,  or  so  mixed  with  sense  and  passion 
as  to  have  none  of  the  true  power.  Still,  when  the 
discipleship  is  assumed  to  be  made  by  faith,  it  must 
also  be  assumed  that,  being  so  made,  it  will  have  all  the 
power  of  faith,  shaping  the  parental  life  in  the  molds 
of  that  power,  and  just  as  certainly  including  or  in- 
closing in  those  molds,  there  to  be  also  shaped,  the 
infant  life  of  the  offspring.  The  father  and  mother 
are  not  merely  a  man  and  a  woman,  but  they  are  a 
man  and  woman  having  children ;  and  accordingly  it 
is  the  father  and  mother,  that  is,  the  man  and  woman 
and  their  children,  that  are  to  be  baptized. 

2.  It  is  precisely  this  great  fact  of  an  organic  unity 
that  is  taken  hold  of  and  consecrated,  in  the  field  of 
religion,  by  the  Abrahamic  and  other  family  covenants. 
And  the  whole  course  of  revelation,  both  in  the  Old 
and  New  Testament,  is  tinged  by  associations,  and  sprin- 
kled over  with  expressions  that  recognize  the  religious 
unity  of  families,  and  the  inclusion  of  the  children  with 
the  parents.  All  the  promises  run — "to  you  and  to 
your  children  ;"  for  Peter's  language  here  is  only  an 
inspired  transfer  and  reassertion  of  the  Jewish  family 
ideas,  at  the  earliest  moment,  in  the  field  of  Christianity 


OF    INFANT    BAPTISM  147 

itself.  It  recognizes  the  fact  that  Christianity  is  just 
what  we  know  it  to  be,  nothing  but  a  continuation  and 
fuller  development  of  the  old  religion.  It  widens  out 
the  scope  of  the  old  religion,  so  as  to  include  all  na- 
tions, even  as  the  prophets  foretold,  and  raises  all  the 
rites  and  symbols  into  a  higher  spiritual  sense,  as  they 
were  appointed  from  the  first  to  be  raised.  Taken  all  to- 
gether, the  old  and  the  new  constitute  a  perfect  whole 
or  system,  and  the  process  is  neither  more  nor  less  than 
God's  way  of  developing  and  authenticating  a  univer- 
sal religion.  In  this  universal  religion,  therefore,  we 
are  to  look  for  the  continuance  onward  of  the  old 
family  character  and  the  inclusive  oneness  of  fathers 
with,  their  children.  The  only  difference  will  be  that 
the  oneness  will  be  raised  into  a  more  spiritual  and 
higher  sense,  just  as  every  thing  else  was  raised.  The 
children  are  thus  looked  upon  to  be  presumptively  as 
believing  in  the  faith,  and  regenerated  in  the  regenera- 
tion of  the  fathers.     And  here  again, 

3.  Circumcision  comes  to  our  aid,  as  another  and  dis- 
tinct evidence.  For  it  was  given  to  be  "a  seal  of  the 
righteousness  of  faith,"  and  the  application  of  it,  as  a 
seal,  to  infant  children,  involves  all  the  precise  diffi- 
culties— neither  more  nor  less — that  are  raised  by  the 
deniers  of  infant  baptism.  Let  the  point  here  made  be 
accurately  understood.  The  argument  is  not  that  infant 
baptism  was  directly  substituted  for  circumcision.  Of 
this  there  is  no  probable  evidence.  Such  a  substitution 
could  not  have  been  made  without  remark,  discussion, 
oppositions  of  prejudice,  and  the  raising  of  contentions 


148  ^iPOSTOLIC    AUTHORITY 

that  would  have  required  distinct  mention,  many  times 
over,   in  the  apostolic  history.     But  the  argument  is 
this:    that   the   Jewish   mind  was   so   familiarized  by 
custom  with  the  notion  of  an  inclusive  religious  unity 
in  families,  (partly  by  the   rite  of  circumcision,)  that 
Christian  baptism,   being  the  seal  of  faith,  was  natu- 
rally and  by  a  kind  of  associational  instinct,  applied 
over  to  families   in  the   same  manner.     Not  to  have 
made  such  an  application  would  have  required  some 
authoritative  interposition,  some  dike  of  positive  hin- 
drance, to  turn  aside  the  current  of  Jewish  preposses- 
sions.    And  if  there  had  risen  up,  somewhere,  a  man 
of  Baptist  notions,  to  ask,  where  is  the  propriety  of  ap- 
plying baptism,  given  as  a  rite  for  believers,  to  infants, 
who  we  certainly  know  are  not  old  enough  to  believe  ? 
he  could  not  even  have  begun  to  raise  an  impression 
by  it.     Was  not  circumcision  given  to  Abraham  to  be 
the  seal  of  faith  ?  and  has  it  not  been  applied  from  his 
time  down  to  the  present,  in  this  way — applied  to  in- 
fant children  eight  day's  old  ?     True  it  is  the  doctrine 
of  Christ,  .''  he  that  believeth  and  is  baptized  shall  be 
saved,"  and  our  apostles  too  are  saying,  "  if  thou  be- 
lievest  with  all  thy  heart  thou  may  est."     So  we  all  say 
and  think,  as  relating  to  adult  persons  ;  but  do  we  not 
all  know  that  what  is  given  to  the  father  includes  the 
children,  and  that  his  faith  is  the  faith  of  the  house  ? 
Nothing,  in  short,  is  plainer  than  that  every  argument 
raised  to  convict  infant  baptism  of  absurdity,  holds,  in 
the   same   manner,  as  convicting   circumcision  of  ab- 
surdity, and  all  the  religious  polity  of  the  former  ages. 


OF    INFANT    BAPTISM.  149 

Every  such  argument,  too,  mocks  the  religious  feeling 
and  conviction  of  all  these  former  ages,  in  a  way  of 
disrespect  equally  presumptuous. 

It  is  very  true,  as  declared  by  the  apostle  Paul,  in 
his  epistle  to  the  Romans,  that  circumcision,  seal  of 
faith  as  it  was,  did  not  always  have  its  meaning  ful- 
filled ;  "for  all  are  not  Israel  that  are  of  Israel."  Esau 
and  Edom,  his  posterity,  became,  thus,  an  apostate  race ; 
and  this,  in  a  certain  sense,  by  Providential  appoint- 
ment. But  the  scope  of  God's  providential  purpose, 
as  every  intelligent  Christian  ought  to  know,  does  not 
correspond  with  the  scope  of  his  grace  or  the  measures 
of  his  gifts  and  promises.  For  the  Providential  plan 
takes  in  all  the  perversities  of  human  action,  while  the 
grace-plan  or  promise  corresponds  with  the  aims  and 
measures  of  God's  paternal  goodness.  He  means  and 
offers,  in  other  words,  more  than  human  perversity  will 
take ;  gives  a  presumption  of  good,  on  his  part,  which 
he  knows  that  human  wrongs  will  not  allow  to  be 
actualized.  Then,  as  his  Providential  purposes  and 
plan  are  graduated  to  what  will  actually  be,  not  to  what 
he  means,  wishes,  and  promises,  it  follows  that  the  facts 
or  issues  of  his  Providential  order  do  not  answer  to  the 
scope  of  his  gracious  intention.  And  thus  it  comes  to 
pass  that,  while  he  gives  a  seal  of  faith,  which  ought  to 
be  answered,  by  a  result  in  which  all  are  Israel  that  are 
of  Israel,  the  fact  is  different.  Had  Israel  ruled  his 
house  as  he  ought,  had  Rebekah  been  an  honest  woman, 
loving  both  her  sons  impartially,  and  seeking  the  true 
welfare  of  both — not  conspiring  with  one  to  rob  and 


150  APOSTOLIC    AUTHORITY 

cheat  the  other — Esau  might  have  been  a  different 
man,  and  Edom  might  have  been  a  family  of  Israel. 
In  circumcision,  as  a  seal  of  faith,  God  gave,  on  his  part, 
the  pledge  and  presumption  that  so  it  should  be.  But 
Edom  was  thrown  off  into  apostasy  by  courses  of  hu- 
man perversity  that  disappointed  the  seal.  And  the 
same  is  true  of  infant  baptism  in  all  those  cases  where 
the  faith  is  narrowed,  or  denied,  by  parental  miscon- 
duct. There  is  yet  no  falsity  in  the  circumcision,  or 
the  baptism,  because  all  which  it  signified  was  true; 
viz.,  that  God,  on  his  part,  sought  and  meant  and 
would  have  made  actual,  the  whole  promise  of  it. 
How  often  is  adult  baptism  itself  applied  to  such  as 
have  no  faith  at  all ;  but  this  does  not  affect  the  inher- 
ent truth  of  the  rite,  and  if  they  should  live  so  as  not 
to  allow  it  any  correspondence  with  fact,  when  applied 
to  their  children,  does  it  any  more  affect  the  truth  of  it 
there  ?  The  rite  measures  God's  intent  and  promise, 
and  refuses  to  narrow  itself  by  the  perversity  of  the 
subjects.  It  says,  "  this  child  shall  grow  up  in  faith — 
so  it  is  given."  Then  if,  by  unbehef  and  graceless  con- 
duct in  the  parents,  it  grows  up  to  be  the  stem  of  an 
Edomitish  stock,  it  will  not  disappoint  God's  providen- 
tial order  and  plan,  and  as  little  will  it  disprove  God's 
promise  and  truth  in  the  baptism.  God  is  honored,  and 
the  rite  is  honored  still.  It  is  only  the  parental  faith 
and  life  that  are  not. 

4.  It  appears  that  Christian  baptism  was  not  a  rite 
wholly  new,  but  a  reapplication  of  proselyte  baptism. 
The  custom  had  been,  as  the  Gentile  was  an  unclean 


OF    INFANT    BAPTISM.  151 

person,  to  baptize  him,  as  a  token  of  cleansing,  wlien  tie 
was  received  to  be  a  Jew;  and  his  family,  of  course, 
were  baptized  with  him,  to  make  the  lustration  com- 
plete. So  Christ  proposes  baptism,  as  the  token  of  that 
lustration,  which  is  to  purify  such  as  become  citizens  in 
the  kingdom  of  heaven.  And  the  conversation  of 
Christ  with  Nicodemus  evidently  supposes  such  a  rite, 
previously  existing  and  familiarly  known  by  him. 
This  being  true,  all  that  he  says  of  baptism,  or  the  lus- 
tration by  water  and  the  Spirit,  supposes  a  baptism  also 
of  children  with  their  parents,  according  to  the  custom. 
The  civil  regeneration  of  the  proselyte  and  his  family 
by  such  ceremonies  will  be  answered,  in  reapplying  the 
rite,  by  the  spiritual  regeneration  of  the  convert  and 
his  family.  If  infants  were,  in  this  case,  to  be  excepted, 
or  not  baptized,  the  exception  required  to  be  expressly 
made ;  for  otherwise,  the  very  transfer  of  the  rite  to  a 
spiritual  use  must,  of  itself,  carry  infant  baptism  with  it. 
Thus  Lightfoot  says  with  great  force,  "  the  Baptists  ob- 
ject— it  is  not  commanded  that  infants  should  be  bap- 
tized, therefore  they  should  not  be  baptized.  But  I 
say  it  is  not  prohibited  that  infants  should  be  baptized, 
therefore  they  should  be  baptized ;  for  since  the  baptism 
of  children  was  familiarly  practiced  in  the  admission 
of  proselytes,  there  was  no  need  that  it  should  be  con- 
firmed by  express  precept,  when  baptism  come  to  be 
an  evangelical  sacrament.  For  Christ  took  baptism  as 
he  found  it,  and  the  whole  nation  knew  perfectly  well 
that  little  children  had  always  been  baptized.  On  the 
contrary,  if  he  had  intended  that  the  custom  should  be 


152  APOSTOLIC    AUTHOKITY 

abolislied,  he  would  have  expressly  prohibited  it." 
Wetstein  also  says,  in  the  same  manner — "I  do  not  see 
how  it  could  enter  into  their  thoughts  to  expunge  boys 
and  infants  from  the  list  of  disciples,  or  from  baptism, 
unless  they  had  been  excluded  by  the  express  injunc- 
tion of  Christ,  which  we  no  where  find."* 

5.  Christ  comes  very  near  to  a  specific  and  formal 
command  of  infant  baptism,  when  we  put  together,  side 
by  side,  what  he  says  of  baptism  in  the  third  chapter 
of  John,  and  what  he  says  concerning  infants  elsewhere. 
There  he  recognizes  baptism  as  a  token  of  one's  en- 
trance into  the  kingdom  of  God;  elsewhere  he  says — 
suffer  little  children  to  come  unto  me  and  forbid  them 
not  for  of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  heave?!.  These  terms, 
*' kingdom  of  God,"  and  "kingdom  of  heaven,"  denote, 
externally,  the  church ;  and  the  church  is  also  presented 
under  the  figure  of  a  school,  as  here  of  a  kingdom,  in 
all  those  cases  where  becoming  "  a  disciple"  or  learner  is 
spoken  of  In  this  latter  view  or  figure,  baptism  is  con- 
ceived to  be  one's  enrollment  openly  as  a  disciple ;  and 
what  is  more  filr  than  that  children  should  be  learners — 
brought  in  by  their  parents  to  be  learners  with  them — 
of  the  Christian  grace?  This,  in  fact,  was  the  general 
significance  of  faith  in  those  times ;  they  were  called 
believers  who  so  recognized  the  truth  of  Christ's  person 
that  they  were  ready  to  become  learners  under  him. 
And  the  Baptists  themselves  act  on  this  same  principle, 
never  holding  the  necessity  that  baptism  should  actually 

*This  subject  of  proselyte  baptism  has  been  spoken  of  also  in  the 
second  Sermon,  and  need  not  be  further  dwelt  upon  here. 


OF    INFANT    BAPTISM.  153 

follow  faith,  in  the  high  and  complete  sense  of  spiritual 
conversion.  Probably  half  their  members,  in  the 
church,  come  into  doubt,  before  they  die,  of  the  time 
when  they  were  really  born  of  the  Spirit ;  and,  in  cases 
of  open  apostasy,  where  there  is  a  recovery,  and  the 
disciple  openly  testifies  that  he  was  not  before  a  truly 
converted  person,  he  is  not  rebaptized.  It  is  enough 
that,  by  his  baptism,  he  has  openly  signified  his  wish 
to  be  a  disciple  in  the  school  of  Christ;  where,  if  he 
has  never  learned  before,  it  is  only  the  more  necessary 
that  he  be  a  true  learner  now ;  which  if  he  become,  the 
great  law,  "he' that  believeth  and  is  baptized,"  is  suffi- 
ciently fulfilled.  Just  so  with  the  child  of  a  Christian 
parentage ;  whatever  doubts  may  be  entertained  of  his 
certainly  growing  up  in  the  faith,  there  is  a  much  bet- 
ter presumption  that  he  will,  if  the  parents  are  faithful, 
than  there  is,  in  the  case  of  persons  converted  from  the 
world,  that  they  will  prove  to  be  true  believers ;  and  if 
he  should  not  grow  up  in  the  faith,  but  afterwards  be- 
comes a  Christian,  there  is  just  as  much  greater  pro- 
priety in  his  baptism  as  an  infant,  and  no  more  reason 
why  he  should  be  rebaptized,  than  there  is  in  the  case 
of  apostate  professors  who  become  truly  converted. 

6.  What  is  said  in  the  New  Testament  of  household 
baptism,  or  the  baptizing  of  households,  is  positive 
proof  that  infants  were  baptized  in  the  times  of  the 
apostles — baptized,  that  is,  in  and  because  of  the  sup- 
posed faith  of  the  parents.  The  fact  of  such  baptism 
is  three  times  distinctly  mentioned ;  in  the  case  of  "  the 
household   of  Stephanas,"  of  Lydia  "and  her  house- 


154  APOSTOLIC    AUTHORITY 

hold,"  and  the  jailor  "and  all  his."  In  the  first  case, 
nothing  is  said  of  faith  at  all,  though  doubtless  he  was 
baptized  as  a  believer.  In,  the  second,  every  thing 
turns  on  the  personal  feith  of  Lydia — "if  ye  have 
judged  me  to  be  faithful."  In  the  third,  it  seems  to  be 
said,  according  to  an  English  translation,  that  all  the 
house  believed — "/^e  rejoiced,  believing  in  God,  with 
all  his  house."  But  the  participle,  believing,  is  singu- 
lar and  not  plural  in  the  original,  and  the  phrase — 
"  with  all  his  house" — plainly  belongs  to  the  verb  and 
not  to  the  participle.  Eigidly  translated,  the  passage 
would  read — "he  rejoiced  with  all  his  house,  himself 
believing." 

It  is  often  objected  that,  in  all  these  three  cases,  for 
aught  that  appears,  the  households  were  made  up  of 
adult  persons,  who  were  baptized  because  they  all  be- 
lieved. But  the  chance  that  this  should  be  true  of  the 
only  three  households  said  to  be  baptized,  and  that 
there  should  be  three  households,  as  households  were 
commonly  made  up  in  that  time,  in  which  there  were 
no  young  children  or  infants,  is  not  even  one  in  a  mil- 
lion, as  computed  by  what  is  called  the  doctrine  of 
chances.  Besides,  if  it  was  a  thing  understood  that  in- 
fants were  never  to  be  baptized,  it  is  important  to  ob- 
serve that  no  such  way  of  speaking  could  ever  come 
into  use.  What  Baptist  could  ever  be  induced,  with 
his  view  of  baptism,  to  say  inclusively,  and  without 
some  kind  of  qualification,  that  he  had  baptized  the 
household  of  Eichard  or  Mary  ?  We  need  not  stop,  in 
this  view,  to  ask  whether  certainly  there  were  infants 


OF    INFANT    BAPTISM.  155 

in  any  one  of  these  households ;  the  mode  of  speaking 
itself  shows  that  baptism  went  by  households,  and  that 
when  the  head  was  judged  to  be  faithful,  his  baptism 
carried  the  presumptive  faith  and  consequent  baptism 
of  all.     Of  this,  too, 

7.  We  have  a  distinct  indication,  in  what  is  said  of 
children,  where  but  one  of  the  parents  believes.  Thus 
Paul  distinctly  teaches,  "  For  the  unbelieving  husband 
is  sanctified  by  the  wife,  and  the  unbelieving  wife  is 
sanctified  by  the  husband ;  else  were  your  children 
unclean,  but  now  are  they  holy."  It  is  not  meant  here 
that  the  children  are  actually  and  inwardly  holy  per- 
sons, but  that  only  having  one  Christian  parent  is  enough 
to  change  their  presumptive  relations  to  God ;  enough 
to  make  them  Christian  children,  as  distinguished  from 
the  children  of  unbelievers.  So  strong  is  the  convic- 
tion, even,  in  these  apostolic  times,  of  an  organic  unity 
sovereign  over  the  faith  and  the  religious  affinities  of 
children  that,  w^here  but  one  parent  only  believes,  that 
faith  carries  presumptively  the  faith  of  the  children 
with  it.  And  upon  this  grand  fact  of  the  religious 
economy,  baptism  was,  from  the  first,  and  properly, 
applied  to  the  children  of  them  that  believe.  Hence, 
too — 

8.  It  was  that  the  children  of  believers  were  famil- 
iarly addressed  with  them  as  believers ;  as  in  the  epis- 
tles of  Paul  to  the  Ephesians  and  Colossians.  These 
epistles  are  formally  inscribed  to  churches  or  Christian 
brotherhoods — "  to  the  saints,  which  are  at  Ephesus, 
and  tQ  tl^e  faithful  in  Christ  Jesus" — "to  the  saints  and 


156  APOSTOLIC    AUTHORITY 

faithful  brethren,  which  are  at  Colosse."  And  yet  in 
both,  the  children  are  particularly  addressed — "Chil- 
dren obey  your  parents  in  the  Lord,  for  this  is  right" — 
Children  obey  your  parents  in  all  things ;  for  this  is 
well  pleasing  unto  the  Lord.  In  this  manner,  children 
are  formally  included  among  the  "faithful  in  Christ 
Jesus."  The  conception  is  that  children  are,  of  course, 
included  in  the  religion  of  their  parentage,  grow  up 
faithful  with  their  faithful  or  believing  parents.  On  the 
ground  of  this  same  presumption,  they  were  properly 
baptized  with  them,  or  on  their  account.     Again — 

9.  It  is  a  point  of  consequence  to  notice  that  such  as 
reject  all  these  and  similar  evidences  from  the  Scrip- 
ture, on  the  ground  that  infant  baptism  can  not  be 
rightly  practiced,  because  it  is  not  directly  and  specifi- 
cally appointed  in  the  Scripture,  do  yet  make  nothing 
of  their  own  argument  in  other  observances  familiarly 
accepted.  Why  infant  baptism  was  not  and  should  not 
be  required  to  have  been  specifically  commanded,  I 
have  shown  already  ;  how,  for  example,  it  was  necessa- 
rily developed,  as  from  a  point  distinctly  referred  to  in 
Peter's  first  sermon,  and  how  the  very  institution  of 
baptism  carried,  of  necessity,  infant  baptism  with  it, 
apart  from  any  express  mention.  In  the  meantime,  it 
will  be  found  that  the  objectors  themselves  are  admit- 
ting and  practicing,  without  difficulty,  observances  that 
have  comparatively  no  specific  authority  at  all.  At 
the  sacrament  of  the  Supper,  they  use  leavened  bread 
without  scruple,  when  they  know  that  it  was  not  used 
by  Christ  himself,  and  was  solemnly  forbidden  at  the 


OF  INFANT    BAPTISM.  157 

festival,  he  was  there,  in  fact,  reappointing  for  the  Chris- 
tian uses  of  his  disciples  in  all  future  ages.  Where 
then  is  the  authority  given  for  a  change  even  in  the 
element  of  the  Holy  Supper  itself?  The  Christian 
Lord's  day,  too,  accepted  in  the  place  of  the  Jewish 
Sabbath,  and  that  even  against  a  specific  command  of 
the  decalogue — how  readily,  and  with  how  little  scru- 
ple, do  they  accept  this  Lord's  day  and  let  the  ancient 
Sabbath  go,  when  it  is  only  by  the  faintest,  most  equivo- 
cal, or  evanescent  indications  they  can  make  out  a  shad- 
ow of  authority  for  the  change?  "Direct  proof!  pos- 
itive command !  specific  injunction!"  they  say,  "with- 
out these,  infant  baptism  has  no  right."  Where  then 
do  they  get  their  authority  for  these  other  observances ; 
one  of  them  never  referred  to  in  Scripture  at  all,  and 
the  other  so  doubtfully  that  infant  baptism  has,  in  com- 
parison, the  clear  evidence  of  day  ? 

Lastly,  it  remains  to  glance  at  the  evidences  from 
church  history,  or  the  history  of  times  subsequent  to 
the  age  of  the  apostles.  It  has  been  the  mood  of  Chris- 
tian learning,  in  the  generation  past — for  the  learned 
men  have  moods  and  phases,  not  to  say  fashions,  like 
others  in  the  less  thoughtful  conditions — to  make  large 
concessions  in  the  matter  of  baptism,  both  as  regards 
the  manner  and  the  subjects.  But  a  reaction  is  now 
begun,  and  it  is  my  fixed  conviction  that  it  will  not 
stop,  till  the  encouragement  heretofore  given  to  the 
Baptist  opinions  is  quite  taken  away. 

It  has  never  been  questioned,  however,  that  infant 
baptism,  became  the  current  practice  of  the  church  at 


158  APOSTOLIC    AUTHOEITY 

a  very  early  date.  It  is  mentioned,  incidentally  and 
otherwise,  in  the  writings  of  the  earliest  church  fathers 
after  the  age  of  the  apostles. 

,  Thus  it  is  testified  by  Justin  Martyr,  who  was  prob- 
ably born  before  the  death  of  the  apostle  John — "  There 
are  many  of  us,  of  both  sexes,  some  sixty  and  some 
seventy  years  old,  who  were  made  disciples  from  their 
childhood."  And  the  word  made  disciples  is  the  same 
that  Christ  himself  used  when  he  said,  "  Go  teach  [i.  e. 
disciple]  all  nations,  baptizing,"  &c. ;  the  same  that  was 
currently  applied  to  baptized  children  afterwards. 

Ireneus,  born  a  few  years  later,  writes — "  Christ  came 
to  redeem  all  by  himself;  all  who  through  him  are 
regenerated  unto  God ;  infants  and  little  children,  and 
young  men,  and  older  persons.  Hence,  he  passed 
through  every  age,  and  for  the  infants  he  became  an 
infant,  sanctifying  infants;  among  the  little  children, 
he  became  a  little  child,  sanctifying  those  who  belong 
to  this  age ;  and  at  the  same  time,  presenting  them  an 
example  of  well  doing,  and  obedience;  among  the 
3^oung  men  he  became  a  young  man,  that  he  might  set 
them  an  example,  and  sanctify  them  to  the  Lord."  In 
the  phrase,  "  regenerated  to  God,"  which  is  thus  applied 
to  infants,  expressly  named  as  distinguished  from  little 
children,  he  refers,  it  can  not  be  doubted,  to  baptism ; 
which,  being  the  outward  sign  of  such  inward  grace, 
was  naturally  and  very  commonly  called  regeneration. 
Infants  plainly  could  be  regenerated  to  God  in  no  other 
sense  ;  and  therefore  his  language  can  not  even  be  sup- 
posed to  have  any  meaning,  if  this  be  rejected. 


OF    INFANT    BAPTISM.  159 

Tertullian  follows,  urging  the  delay  of  baptism,  and,  in 
fact,  advocating  the  disuse  of  infant  baptism  altogether. 
But  his  appeal  supposes  the  current  practice  of  such 
baptism  at  the  time,  and  in  that  way  rather  augments 
than  diminishes  the  weight  of  historic  evidence.  And 
the  more  so  that  he  urges  the  delay  of  baptism  on 
grounds  that  are  false  and  even  superstitious,  viz. :  that 
baptism  carries  the  forgiveness  of  sins,  and  should 
therefore  be  postponed  to  a  later  period,  because  the 
sins  committed  after  baptism  must  otherwise  be  cleared 
by  a  more  purgatorial  method. 

Origen,  who  was  born  near  the  close  of  the  second 
century,  or  about  a  hundred  years  after  the  time  of  the 
apostles,  testifies — "According  to  the  usage  of  the 
church,  baptism  is  given  to  infants."  And  again — "  The 
church  received  an  order  from  the  apostles  to  baptize 
infants." 

Somewhere  in  these  first  two  centuries,  the  ancient 
writing  called  the  "Shepherd,"  or  the  "Shepherd  of 
Hermas,"  because  it  purports  to  have  been  written  by  a 
teacher  of  that  name,  declares  the  opinion  that — "  All 
infants  are  in  honor  with  the  Lord,  and  are  esteemed 
first  of  all — the  baptism  of  water  is  necessary  to  all." 
Who  this  Hermas  was,  and  when  he  lived,  is  not  ascer- 
tained, but  he  is  supposed  by  many  to  be  the  very  same 
person  mentioned  by  Paul,  Rom.  xvi.  14.  He  is  ac- 
knowledged by  ISTeander,  as  one  who  "  had  great  author- 
ity in  the  first  centuries." 

It  is  a  remarkable  evidence,  too,  that  inscriptions  are 
found  on  the  monuments  of  children,  considered  by 


160  APOSTOLIC    AUTHOKITY 

antiquarians  to  be  of  a  very  early  age,  probably  of  tbe 
first  two  or  three  centuries,  in  wliich  they  are  called 
fideks^  that  \s  faithfuls  ;  just  as  children  are  addressed  by 
Paul  among  the  "faithful  brethren"  of  Ephesus  and 
Colosse.  The  following  is  an  example — (Buonarotti, 
17  Fabretti,  Cap.  4,)  "A  faithful  among  faithfuls,  here 
lies  Zosimus.  He  lived  two  years  one  month  and 
twenty-five  days."  How  far  they  carried  the  presump- 
tion of  infant  baptism,  that  children  are  to  grow  up  in 
the  grace  of  their  parents,  is  here  seen. 

It  signifies  little,  therefore,  as  respects  this  question, 
after  the  authorities  cited,  that  the  Bishops  of  the  North 
African  Church,  in  a  council  called  by  Cyprian,  about  the 
middle  of  the  third  century,  decided  that  baptism  should 
not  of  course  be  delayed  for  eight  days,  according  to 
the  law  of  circumcision,  which  many  supposed  to  gov- 
ern the  rite. 

So  clear,  in  short,  and  decided  was  the  authority  of 
infant  baptism,  that  Pelagius,  a  man  of  great  learning, 
who  had  traveled  in  Britain,  France,  Italy,  Africa 
Proper,  Egypt,  and  Palestine,  declared,  in  his  contro- 
versy with  Augustine,  about  the  beginning  of  the  fifth 
century,  that  "he  had  never  heard  of  any  impious 
heretic  or  sectary,  who  had  denied  infant  baptism." 
"  What,"  he  also  asked,  "  can  be  so  impious  as  to  hinder 
the  baptism  of  infants?" 

Augustine  himself  also  testifies — "  The  whole  church 
of  Christ  has  constantly  held  that  infants  were  baptized. 
Infant  baptism  the  whole  church  practices.  It  was  not 
instituted  by  councils,  but  was  ever  in  use." 


OF    INFANT    BAPTISM.  161 

Infant  baptism,  therefore,  is  a  fact  of  cliurch  history 
not  to  be  fairly  questioned.  And  accordingly  the  ar- 
gument may  be  summed  up  thus :  beginning  at  a  point 
previous,  we  find  customs  and  associations  that  would 
almost  certainly  be  issued  in  such  a  rite  of  family  relig- 
ion; in  the  discourses  of  Christ  and  the  apostolical 
writings  we  find  that  it  actually  was ;  and  then  we  find 
the  facts  of  church  history  correspondent.  On  the 
whole,  while  it  may  be  admitted  that  baptism  itself  is  a 
little  more  positively  authenticated,  it  can  not  be  denied 
that  infant  baptism  is  authenticated  by  all  sufl&cient 
evidence. 


VII. 

CHURCH   MEMBERSHIP    OF    CHILDREN. 

"  To  tlie  saints  and  faithful  brethren  in  Christ  which  are  at  Colosse." — 
Colossians^  i.  2. 

These  "saints  and  faithful  bretliren,"  it  will  be  seen, 
include  young  children ;  for  the  apostle  makes  a  distri- 
bution of  them  afterwards,  in  the  third  chapter  of  the 
epistle,  addressing  the  class  of  wives,  the  class  of  hus- 
bands, the  class  of  fathers,  the  class  of  servants,  the 
class  of  masters,  and,  among  all  these,  the  class  of  chil- 
dren— "Children  obey  your  parents  in  all  things;  for 
this  is  well  pleasing  unto  the  Lord."  The  Epistle  to  the 
Ephesians,  too,  is  inscribed,  in  the  same  way — "  to  the 
saints  which  are  at  Ephesus,  and  to  the  faithful  in 
Christ;"  and  this,  again,  makes  a  like  distribution; 
addressing  the  classes  of  husbands,  wives,  fathers,  moth- 
ers, children,  servants,  an(^  masters,  all  as  being  in- 
cluded in  the  church  at  Ephesus — "  children  obey  your 
parents  in  the  Lord;  for  this  is  right.  Honor  thy 
father  and  mother ;  for  this  is  the  first  commandment 
with  promise."  Where  also  it  is  made  clear  that  he  is 
speaking  to  quite  young  children ;  for  he  turns  imme- 
diately to  the  fathers,  exhorting  them  to  bring  up  their 
children  in  the  nurture  and  admonition  of  the  Lord. 


CHUKCH    MEMBERSHIP.  163 

They  are  children  so  young,  therefore,  as  to  be  subjects 
of  nurture,  and  yet  are  addressed  among  the  faithful 
brethren. 

The  explanation,  then,  is  not  that  such  children  were 
believers,  in  the  sense  of  being  converts  entered  into 
the  fold  by  an  adult  experience,  and  distinguished  from 
other  children  not  thus  converted.  When  Lydia 
speaks  of  herself  as  one  adjudged  to  be  "faithful,"  it  is 
probably  in  this  sense.  But  when  Titus,  in  ordaining 
elders,  is  directed  to  choose  such  as  have  "faithful 
children,  not  accused  of  riot,  or  unruly,"  it  would  be 
very  singular,  if  he  was  permitted  to  ordain  only  such 
as  have  all  their  children  thus  formally  converted. 
Paul  obviously  means  that  the  elders  shall  be  such 
as  are  under  no  scandal  on  account  of  their  fami- 
lies ;  whose  children  are  growing  up  in  the  Christian 
way  and  grace ;  sober,  well-behaved,  hopefully  Chris- 
tian children.  We  can  see,  too,  in  the  language  em- 
ployed, that  Paul  includes  the  Colossian  and  Ephesian 
children  among  the  faithful  brethren  of  the  two  cities, 
in  this  more  presumptive  or  merely  anticipative  way. 
For  when  he  says,  "  children  obey  your  parents  in  the 
Lord,"  it  is  not  "children  in  the  Lord,"  or  "children 
obey  in  the  Lord,  your  parents,"  but  it  is  "  obey  them 
who  are  parents  in  the  Lord;"  as  if  their  very  parent- 
age itself,  in  the  flesh,  were  a  parentage  also  in  the 
Spirit,  communicating  both  a  personal  and  a  Christian 
life.  So,  also,  when  the  parents  are  required  to  give  a 
nurture  in  the  Lord,  we  may  see  that  the  children  are 
expected  to  be  grown  as  saints  and  faithfuls,  and  to  be 


164  CHURCH    MEMBERSHIP 

presumptively  in  tlie  Lord,  apart  from  all  expectations 
and  processes  of  adult  conversion. 

And  it  was  out  of  such  uses  that  the  term  '■'■  faitlifuV* 
grew  into  the  peculiar  kind  of  church  use,  in  which  it 
denotes  all  the  supposed  members  of  the  Christian  body, 
whether  adults,  or  only  baptized  children ;  as,  for  ex- 
ample, in  that  very  ancient  inscription  cited  by  Buona- 
rotti,  where  the  child  "two  years,  one  month,  and 
twenty -five  days  old,"  is  described  as  lying  among  his 
Christian  kinsmen — "  a  faithful  among  faithfuls."  The 
very  language  supposes  a  membership  in  the  church, 
or  among  the  faithful  brethren,  by  virtue  of  baptism 
and  mere  Christian  nurture ;  such  as  on  the  footing  of 
strict  individualism,  held  by  our  Baptist  brethren,  could 
never  even  be  thought  of. 

What  I  propose  then,  at  the  present  time,  is  a  full 
and  careful  discussion  of  this  great  subject,  the  church 
membership  of  ha2:)tized  children. 

And  as  it  has  fallen  out,  in  the  extreme  individualism 
of  our  modern  era,  that  multitudes  are  unable  to  con- 
ceive it  as  being  any  thing  less  than  a  kind  of  absurdity, 
or  self-evident  monstrosit}^,  I  shall  be  obliged  to  show 
the  nature  and  kind  of  this  membership. 

As  it  is  very  commonly  disrespected  on  the  ground 
of  its  practical  insignificance,  I  must  also  show  the  rea- 
sons why  it  should  exist. 

And  then,  since  it  is  to  the  same  extent,  .disowned  as 
a  rightful  part  of  the  true  church  economy,  I  must  also 
establish  the  fact  of  its  existence. 


OF    CHILDREN.  165 

I.  I  am  to  show  the  nature  and  extent  of  this  mem- 
bership. 

All  those  classes  of  Christian  disciples  who  practice 
infant  baptism  conceive  it,  of  course,  to  have  a  certain 
common  character  with  adult  baptism,  and  so  to  create 
a  supposed,  or  somehow  supposable  membership  in  the 
church.  And  jet  they  often  have  it  as  a  question,  sup- 
pressed, or  openly  put  without  satisfaction — ''  who  is  a 
member  of  Christ's  body,  but  one  who  is  able  to  act 
and  choose  for  himself,  and  in  that  manner  to  believe?" 
Many  preachers,  too,  quite  pass  over  the  fact  of  any 
assignable  reality  in  this  relationship,  publishing  a  call 
of  salvation  that  practically  ignores  it  as  having  any 
meaning  at  all ;  addressing  young  persons  and  children 
who  have  been  baptized,  in  a  way  that  as  steadily  and 
unqualifiedly  assumes  their  unregenerate  state,  as  if  they 
were  the  children  of  heathenism.  The  opposers  of 
infant  baptism  are  bolder  and  more  positive,  of  course, 
insisting  always  on  the  manifest  absurdity  of  this 
nondescript,  unintelligible,  unintelligent  membership; 
which  makes  a  child  a  church  member,  not  to  be  a 
voter  nor  a  subject  of  discipline ;  which  puts  the  initia- 
tory rite  of  faith  upon  him,  when  he  does  not  believe 
any  thing,  or  even  know  that  there  is  any  to  believe ; 
creating  thus  a  membership  that  has  no  rational  mean- 
ing and  no  sound  verity,  but  supposes  a  faith  that  does 
not  exist,  and  constitutes  a  relationship  that  brings  into 
no  relation. 

What,  then,  is  this  infant  membership  ?  what  concep- 
tion can  we  take  of  it,  which  will  justify  its  Christian 


166  CHUKCH    MEMBERSHIP 

dignity  ?  A  great  many  persons  who  are  very  sharp  at 
this  kind  of  criticism,  appear  to  have  never  observed 
that  creatures  existing  under  conditions  of  growth,  allow 
no  such  terms  of  classification  as  those  do  which  are 
dead,  and  have  no  growth ;  such,  for  example,  as 
stones,  metals,  and  earths.  They  are  certain  that  gold 
is  not  iron,  and  iron  is  not  silver,  and  they  suppose  that 
they  can  class  the  growing  and  transitional  creatures, 
that  are  separated  by  no  absolute  lines,  in  the  same  man- 
ner. They  talk  of  colts  and  horses,  lambs  and  sheep, 
and  it,  possibly,  not  once  occurs  to  them,  that  they  can 
never  tell  when  the  colt  becomes  a  horse,  or  the  lamb 
a  sheep ;  and  that  about  the  most  definite  thing  they 
can  say,  when  pressed  with  that  question,  is  that  the 
colt  is  potentially  a  horse,  the  lamb  a  sheep,  even  from 
the  first,  having  in  itself  this  definite  futurition ;  and, 
therefore,  that,  while  horses  and  sheep  are  not  all  to  be 
classed  as  colts  and  lambs,  all  colts  and  lambs  may  be 
classed  as  horses  and  sheep.  And  just  so  children  are 
all  men  and  women;  and,  if  there  is  any  law  of  futurition 
in  them  to  justify  it,  may  be  fitly  classed  as  believing 
men  and  women.  And  all  the  sharp  arguments  that 
go  to  cover  their  membership,  as  such,  in  the  church, 
with  absurdity,  or  turn  it  into  derision,  are  just  such 
arguments  as  the  inventors  could  raise  with  equal  point, 
to  ridicule  the  horsehood  and  sheephood  of  the  young 
animals  just  referred  to.  The  propriety  of  this  mem- 
bership does  not  lie  in  what  those  infants  can  or  can  not 
believe,  or  do  or  do  not  believe,  at  some  given  time, 
as,  for  example,  on  the  day  of  their  baptism  ;  but  it  lies 


OF    CHILDKEJSr.  167 

in  the  covenant  of  promise,  wliich  makes  their  parents, 
parents  in  the  Lord ;  their  nurture,  a  nurture  of  the 
Lord ;  and  so  constitutes  a  force  of  futurition  bv  which 
they  are  to  grow  up,  imperceptibly,  into  "faithfuls 
among  faithfuls,"  in  Christ  Jesus.  Perhaps  no  one  can 
tell  when  they  become  such,  and  it  may  be  that  some 
initiating  touch  of  grace  began  to  work  inductively  in 
them,  by  a  process  too  delicate  for  human  observation, 
even  from  their  earliest  infancy,  or  from  their  baptismal 
day.  For  there  is  a  nurture  of  grace,  as  well  as  a  grace 
of  conversion;  that  for  childhood,  as  this  for  the  age 
of  maturity,  and  one  as  sure  and  genuine  as  the  other. 

The  conception,  then,  of  this  membership  is,  that  it 
is  a  potentially  real  one ;  that  it  stands,  for  the  present, 
in  the  faith  of  the  parents  and  the  promise  which  is  to 
them  and  to  their  children,  and  that,  on  this  ground, 
they  may  well  enough  be  accounted  believers,  just  as 
they  are  accounted  potentially  men  and  women.  Then, 
as  they  come  forward  into  maturity,  it  is  to  be  assumed 
that  they  will  come  forward  into  faith,  being  grown  in 
the  nurture  of  faith,  and  will  claim  for  themselves,  the 
membership,  into  which  they  were  before  inserted. 

Nor  is  this  a  case  which  has  no  analogies,  that  it 
should  be  held  up  as  a  mark  of  derision.  It  is  gene- 
rally supposed  that  our  common  law  has  some  basis  of 
common  sense.  And  yet  this  body  of  law  makes  every 
infant  child  a  citizen ;  requiring,  as  a  point  of  public 
order,  the  whole  constabulary  and  even  military  force 
of  the  state  to  come  to  the  rescue,  or  the  redress  of  his 
wrongs,  when  his  person  is  seized  or  property  invaded 


168  CHURCH    MEMBERSHIP 

by  conspiracy.  This  infant  child  can  sue  and  be  sued ; 
for  the  court  of  chancery  will  appoint  him  a  guardian, 
whose  acts  shall  be  the  child's  acts ;  and  it  shall  be  a« 
if  he  were  answering  for  his  own  education,  dress, 
board,  entertainments,  and  the  damages  done  by  his 
servants,  precisely  as  if  he  were  a  man  acting  in  his 
own  cause.  Doubtless  it  may  sound  very  absurdly  to 
call  him  a  citizen.  What  can  he  do  as  a  citizen  ?  He 
can  not  vote,  nor  bear  arms ;  he  does  not  even  know 
what  these  things  mean,  and  yet  he  is  a  citizen.  In  one 
view,  he  votes,  bears  arms,  legislates,  even  in  his  cra- 
dle ;  for  the  potentiality  is  in  him,  and  the  state  takes 
him  up  in  her  arms,  as  it  were,  to  own  him  as  her 
citizen. 

In  a  strongly  related  sense,  it  is,  that  the  baptized 
child  is  a  believer  and  a  member  of  the  church.  There 
is  no  unreality  in  the  position  assigned  him;  for  the 
futurition  of  God's  promise  is  in  him,  and,  by  a  kind 
of  sublime  anticipation,  he  is  accepted  in  God's  super- 
natural economy  as  a  believer ;  even  as  the  law  accepts 
him,  in  the  economy  of  society,  to  be  a  citizen.  He  is 
potentially  both,  and  both  is  actually  to  be,  in  a  way 
of  transition  so  subtle  and  imperceptible  that  no  one 
can  tell,  when  he  begins  to  be,  either  one,  or  the  other. 

ITor  is  it  any  objection  that  there  might  be  some  dif- 
ficulty in  the  exercise  of  a  regular  church  discipline 
over  baptized  children ;  or  that,  if  this  can  not  be  done, 
they  are  really  not  church  members  in  any  sense  that 
ought  to  be  implied  in  the  terms.  Is  then  a  child  no 
citizen,  because  he  is  not  held  responsible  in  the  law 


OF    CHILDREN.  169 

in  precisely  the  same  manner  as  adults ;  responsible,  in 
a  private  action,  for  slander ;  or  responsible,  in  a  pub- 
lic, for  murder  and  treason  ?  The  church  membership 
is,  of  course,  to  be  qualified  and  shaded  by  the  grada- 
tions of  age ;  just  as  the  law  contrives  to  shade  the 
progress  of  the  citizen  child  into  the  citizen  man.  All 
the  logical  or  theological  bantering  we  hear,  therefore, 
on  one  side  or  the  other,  showing  that  the  child,  being 
a  church  member,  ought  to  be  held  subject  to  discipline ; 
or,  if  he  is  not  held  subject  to  discipline,  that  he  is 
really  no  church  member,  is  without  reason  "*or  any 
proper  show  of  practical  dignity. 

It  was  proposed — 

II.  To  show  the  reasons  why  this  relation  of  infant 
membership  should  exist,  or  be  appointed.  And  here 
it  is  very  obvious — 

First  of  all,  that,  if  there  is  really  no  place  in  the 
church  of  God  for  infant  children,  then  it  must  be  said, 
and  formally  maintained,  that  there  is  none.  And  what 
could  be  worse  in  its  effect  on  a  child's  feeling,  than  to 
find  himself  repelled  from  the  brotherhood  of  God's 
elect,  in  that  manner.  What  can  the  hapless  creature 
think,  either  of  himself  or  of  God,  when  he  is  told  that 
he  is  not  old  enough  to  be  a  Christian,  or  be  owned  by 
the  Saviour  as  a  disciple  ? 

Again,  it  would  be  most  remarkable,  if  Christianity, 
organizing  a  fold  of  grace  and  love,  in  the  world  and 
for  it,  had  yet  no  place  in  the  fold  for  children.  It 
spreads  its  arms  to  say — *'  For  God  so  loved  the  world," 


170  CHURCH    MEMBERSHIP 

and  even  declares  that  publicans  and  harlots  shall  flock 
in,  before  the  captious  priests  and  princes  of  the  day ; 
and  yet  it  has  no  place,  we  are  told,  for  children ;  chil- 
dren are  out  of  the  category  of  grace  I  Jesus  himself 
was  a  child,  and  went  through  all  the  phases  and  con- 
ditions of  childhood,  not  to  show  any  thing  by  that 
fact,  as  the  Christian  Fathers  fondly  supposed ;  he  said, 
too,  "  Suffer  little  children,"  but  this  was  only  his  hu- 
man feeling ;  he  had  no  official  relationship  to  such, 
and  no  particular  grace  for  them !  They  are  all  outside 
the  salvation-fold,  hardening  there  in  the  storm,  till 
their  choosing,  refusing,  desiring,  sinning  power  is  suf- 
ficiently unfolded  to  have  a  place  assigned  them  within ! 
Is  this  Christianity  ?  Is  it  a  preparation  so  clumsy,  so 
little  human,  so  imperfectly  graduated  to  man  as  he  is, 
that  it  has  no  place  for  a  full  sixth  part  of  the  human 
race;  a  part  also  to  which  the  other  five-sixths  are 
bound,  in  the  dearest  ties  of  love  and  care,  and  all  but 
compulsory  expectation  ?  It  would  seem  that  any  Chris- 
tian heart,  meeting  Christianity  at  this  point,  and  sur- 
veying it  with  only  a  little  natural  feeling,  would  even 
be  oppressed  by  the  sense  of  some  strange  defect  in  it, 
as  a  grace  for  the  world.  In  this  view  it  gives  to  little 
children  the  heritage  only  of  Cain,  requiring  them  to 
be  driven  out  from  the  presence  of  the  Lord,  and  grow 
up  there  among  the  outside  crew  of  aliens  and  ene- 
mies. Let  no  one  be  surprized  that,  under  such  treat- 
ment, they  stiffen  into  alienated,  wrathfal  men,  ripened 
for  wickedness,  by  the.  ranges  of  all  but  reprobate  ex- 
clusion in  which  they  have  been  classed. 


OF    CHILDREN.  171 

Nor,  again,  is  it  any  breach  on  their  liberty,  that  chil- 
dren are  entered  into  this  qualified  membership  by 
their  parents.  What  is  it  but  a  being  entered  into 
privilege  ?  Is  it  a  hard  thing  for  human  parents  to 
enter  their  child  into  the  lot  of  wealth  and  high 
society,  and  a  station  of  family  dignity,  because  it 
does  not  leave  them  to  acquire  the  wealth  and  the  posi- 
tion of  honor  in  society,  by  their  own  original  exertion, 
unassisted?  When  the  order  of  the  Cincinnati  took 
their  sons  into  the  grand  society  of  revolutionary  honor 
with  them,  was  it  a  breach  on  the  liberty  of  the  chil- 
dren ?  Or  we  may  take  another  view  of  the  question. 
The  church  of  God  is  a  school,  and  the  members 
are  disciples,  or  learners.  Does  not  every  parent 
choose  the  school  for  his  children,  giving  them  no 
choice  in  the  matter,  and  taking  it  to  be  his  own 
unquestionable  right?  This,  too,  on  the  ground  that 
they  are  to  have  the  benefit  of  his  maturer  judgment, 
and  his  more  competent  choice.  Where  then  is  the 
encroachment,  when  Christian  parents  baptize  their 
child  into  the  same  discipleship  with  themselves,  and 
set  it  in  the  school  of  Christ  ?  It  is  only  a  part  of  their 
ordinary  charge  as  parents,  for  it  is  given  them  to  have 
the  child  in  their  own  character,  so  to  speak,  and  be 
themselves  discipled  with  it  and  for  it,  (and  why  not  it 
with  them?)  in  all  the  honors  and  hopes  of  the  heav- 
enly kingdom. 

Consider  again  the  remarkable  and  certainly  painful 
fact  that,  in  the  view  which  excludes  infant  baptism  and 
the  discipleship  of  children,  the  conversion  itself  of  a 


172  CHURCH    MEMBERSHIP 

parent  operates  a  kind  of  dissolution  in  the  family  state, 
than  which  nothing  could  be  more  unnatural.  It  is 
much  as  if  our  process  of  naturalization  in  the  state, 
were  to  naturalize  the  parents  and  not  the  children ; 
leaving  these  to  be  foreigners  still,  and  aliens.  God's 
effectual  calling  is  no  such  unnatural  grace;  it  will 
never  call  the  parents  away  from  the  children ;  to  be 
themselves  included  in  the  great. family  of  salvation, 
and  look  out,  in  their  joy,  to  see  their  children  fenced 
away !  No — "  The  promise  is  to  you.  and  to  your  chil- 
dren;" not,  to  you.  without  your  children.  Come  in 
hither,  then,  ye  guilty  families  of  man,  parents  to  be 
parents  in  the  Lord,  children  to  obey  in  the  Lord,  all 
to  be  circled  by  the  common  grace  of  life  and  the  com- 
mon fellowship  of  the  saints.  Why  should  we  think 
that  our  Great  Father  who  has  been  refusing,  ever  since 
the  world  began,  to  so  much  as  put  into  any  bird  of  the 
air,  an  instinct  that  will  draw  it  away  from  its  nest, 
may  yet,  as  a  matter  of  celestial  mercy,  be  engaged  by 
his  Spirit,  in  the  gathering  of  human  parents  away 
from  their  young ! 

It  is  a  matter,  too,  of  great  consequence  to  parents,  as 
respects  their  own  fidelity  in  their  ofiice,  that  their  chil- 
dren are  not  put  away,  by  the  Saviour,  to  hold  rank 
with  heathens  outside  of  the  fold,  but  are  brought  in 
with  them,  to  be  heirs  together  with  them  in  the  grace 
of  life.  What  will  justify,  or  will  naturally  produce,  a 
more  sullen  remissness  of  duty  in  parents,  than  to  feel 
that,  for  the  present,  God  has  shut  away,  and  is  holding 
away  their  children,  and  that  they  are  never  to  be  dis- 


OF    CHILDREN.  173 

ciples  of  the  fold,  till  after  they  have  been  passed  round 
into  it,  through  long  detours  of  estrangement  and  ripen- 
ing guiltiness?  If  there  is  nothing  better  for  them 
than  to  be  converted  just  as  heathens  are,  why  should 
they,  as  parents,  be  greatly  concerned  for  their  own  ex- 
ample, and  the  faithfulness  of  their  training,  when  the 
conversion  is  to  be  every  thing  and  will  have  power  to 
remedy  every  defect  ? 

How  refreshing  the  contrast,  when  the  children,  giv- 
en to  God  in  baptism,  are  accounted  members  of  the 
church  with  them,  as  being  included  in  their  faith,  and 
having  the  seal  of  it  upon  them.  They  look  upon  it 
now  as  their  privilege  to  be  parents  in  the  Lord.  Their 
prayers,  they  understand,  are  to  keep  heaven  open  upon 
their  house.  Their  aims  are  to  be  Christian.  Their 
tastes  and  manners  to  be  flavored  by  the  Christian  hope 
in  which  they  live.  There  is  to  be  a  quickening  ele- 
ment in  the  atmosphere  they  make.  They  will  set  all 
things  upon  a  Christian  footing  for  their  children's  sake ; 
and  their  children,  growing  up  in  such  nurture  of  the 
Lord,  will,  how  certainly,  unfold  what  their  nurture 
itself  has  quickened. 

It  is  still  another  consideration,  that  the  church  itself, 
having  this  infant  membership  in  it,  will  unfold  other 
aims  and  tempers,  and  exert  a  finer  quality  of  power. 
It  will  not  be  a  dry  convention  of  simply  grown  up 
men  and  women ;  the  men  will,  some  of  them,  be  fath- 
ers, the  women  mothers,  and  the  children  being  also 
gathered  with  them  in  the  fold,  they  will  all  be  gentled 
together  by  the  tender  brotherhood  of  the  little  ones. 


174  CHURCH    MEMBERSHIP 

The  parents  will  learn  from  the  children  quite  as  much 
as  thej  teach,  and  will  do  their  teaching  fitly,  just  be- 
cause they  learn.  The  church  prayers  will  have  a  cer- 
tain paternity  and  maternity  in  them,  and  the  children 
will  feel  the  grace  of  these  prayers  warming  always 
round  them.  Even  the  church  life  itself,  two,  or  three, 
or  more,  generations  deep,  will  be  qualified  by  the  grand- 
father and  grandmother  spirit,  and  the  father  and 
mother  spirit,  and  the  reverent  manners  of  the  little 
ones,  and  the  whole  volume  of  religious  life  will  be  un- 
folded thus,  by  taking  into  itself  the  whole  volume  of 
nature  and  family  feeling. 

Such  are  some  of  the  reasons,  briefly  and  faintly 
presented,  which  determine,  as  I  conceive,  God's  ap- 
pointment of  the  great  fact  of  an  infant  membership  in 
his  church.  And  yet  the  reasons,  taken  by  themselves, 
are  hardly  a  sufficient  evidence  of  the  fact.  They  set 
us  in  the  mood  of  respect,  and  even  put  us  in  the  ex- 
pectation of  it,  but  they  leave  the  inquiry  still  upon  our 
hands — 

Til.  Whether  the  supposed  infant  membership  is  a 
real  and  true  fact?  That  it  is,  may  be  seen  from  the 
following  proofs : — 

1.  Those  declarations  of  Scripture  which  assert  or 
assume  the  fact.  '  Thus,  when  the  Saviour  commands — 
"  Suffer  little  children  to  come  unto  me  and  forbid  them 
not,  for  of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven,"  it  would  be 
very  singular  if  they  could  not  come  in  with  the  disci- 
ples, when  they  may  so  freely  come  to  the  Master  him- 


OF    CHILDREN.  175 

self.  And  if  Christ  had  been  calling  his  disciples 
themselves  into  fraternity  with  him,  what  more  could 
he  have  said  for  them,  than  that  of  such  is  the  king- 
dom of  heaven?  Nor  is  it  any  objection,  as  respects  the 
children,  that,  except  a  man  be  born  again,  he  can  not 
be  entered  into  this  kingdom ;  for  potentially,  at  least, 
they  are  thus  born  again ;  and  so  are  as  fitly  to  be 
counted  citizens  of  the  kingdom,  as  they  are  to  be  citi- 
zens of  the  state.  Besides,  there  is  still  less  in  that 
kind  of  objection,  that  the  kingdom  of  God,  taken  in  its 
lower  sense  as  identical  with  the  church,  is  expressly 
likened  by  the  Saviour  to  a  net  that  gathers  of  every 
kind.  And  what  again  does  it  signify,  as  regards  the 
apostolic  ideas  of  this  matter  of  infant  membership,  that 
the  great  apostle  to  the  Gentiles,  in  at  least  two  of  his 
epistles  to  Christian  churches,  addresses,  directly,  chil- 
dren, as  being  included  among  the  saints  and  faithful  in 
Christ  Jesus  ?     I  allege  as  proof, 

2.  The  analogy  of  circumcision.  This  was  given  to 
be  the  seal  of  faith,  and  the  churcb  token,  in  tbat  man- 
ner, of  a  godly  seed.  Baptism  can  certainly  be  the 
same  with  as  little  difficulty,  or  as  little  charge  of  ab- 
surdity. True,  they  were  not  all  Israel  that  were  of 
Israel,  and  so  all  may  not  be  Israel  that  are  baptized. 
Enough  that  God  gives  the  possibility,  in  both  cases,  in 
giving  the  rite  itself;  and  then  it  is  to  be  seen,  whether 
the  parents  will  be  parents  in  the  Lord,  as  it  is  for- 
mally permitted  them  to  be.  Let  the  true  point  here 
be  carefully  observed ;  some  kind  of  presumption  must 
be  given  by  God,  in  respect  to  the  church  position  of 


176  CHURCH    MEMBERSHIP 

children ;  for  they  must  either  be  taken  into  the  church, 
or  else  they  must  be  excluded  till  they  are  old  enough 
to  be  admitted  on  the  ground  of  a  religious  experience — 
there  is  no  other  alternative.  If  they  are  excluded, 
then  it  is  taken  for  granted,  that  they  are  to  grow  up 
as  unbelievers  and  aliens,  which  is  only  their  public 
consignment  to  evil.  If  they  are  taken  to  be  in  the 
faith,  presumptively,  as  in  the  nurture  of  their  parents, 
and  so  accepted,  then  every  kind  encouragement  is 
given  to  them,  and  every  pledge  of  divine  help  is  gra- 
ciously given  to  their  parents.  Which  of  the  two  meth- 
ods is  most  consonant  to  nature,  and  worthiest  of 
God's  beneficence,  it  is  not  difficult  to  see.  God,  on  his 
part,  gives  no  presumption,  either  to  the  parents  or  their 
child,  that  he  is  to  be  only  a  transgressor  and  alien,  but 
he  gives  the  seal  of  the  faith,  as  a  pledge,  to  raise  their 
expectation  of  what  he  will  do  for  them,  and  to  throw 
the  blame  of  a  godless  childhood  and  youth,  if  such 
there  is  to  be,  on  themselves. 

3.  The  church  connection  of  children  is  virtually  as- 
sumed, as  we  may  see,  by  the  apostle  Paul,  when  he 
teaches  that  the  believing  wife  sanctifies  the  unbelieving 
husband,  and  the  believing  husband  the  unbelieving 
wife — "  else  were  your  children  unclean,  but  now  are 
they  holy."  He  refers,  in  this  matter,  it  is  plain, 
to  the  effect  of  a  parental  faith,  on  the  church  position 
of  children.  He  does  not,  of  course,  use  the  term 
^^  sanctify, ^^  in  any  spiritual  sense,  as  afiirming  the  regen- 
eration of  character  in  the  children;  but  he  alludes 
only  to  the  church  ideas  of  clean  and  unclean,  afiirming 


OF    CHILDREN.  177 

that  the  unclean  state  of  a  godless  father,  or  mother,  is 
so  far  taken  awaj  by  the  clean  state  of  a  godly  mother, 
or  father,  that  the  children  are  accounted  clean,  or 
holy — so  far  holy,  that  is,  that  they  are  of  the  fold,  and 
not  aliens,  or  unclean  foreigners  without  the  fold,  as  the 
Jews  were  accustomed  to  regard  all  the  uncircumcised 
races.  One  believing  parent,  he  declares,  puts  the  chil- 
dren in  the  church  clawssification  of  believers. 

4.  All  the  reasons  I  have  given  for  the  observance 
of  infant  baptism,  go  to  establish  also  the  fact  of  in- 
fant membership  in  the  church.  And  this  holds  good, 
especially  of  that  which  discovers  the  origin  of  the  rite 
in  proselyte  baptism.  For  as  foreigners,  becoming  pros- 
elytes, were  baptized  and  so  made  clean,  thus  to  be  ac- 
counted natural  born  citizens,  so  Christ,  reapplying  the 
rite  to  a  spiritual  use,  makes  it  the  token  of  that  regen- 
eration which  enters  the  soul  into  his  heavenly  king- 
dom, and  gives  a  divine  citizenship  there.  In  which 
you  may  see  how  my  comparison  of  infant  membership 
in  the  church,  to  the  well-known  citizenship  of  infants 
in  the  state,  is  borne  out  by  Christian  authority  itself 
Their  very  baptism  is  the  figure  of  their  citizenship ; 
wherein  they  are  shown  to  be  "fellow-citizens  of  the 
saints,  and  of  the  household  of  God." 

Now  it  is  to  be  conceded,  as  respects  all  these  proofs 
from  the  Scripture,  that  the  church  membership  of  chil- 
dren is  not  formally  asserted  in  them.  According  to 
a  certain  coarse  way  of  judging,  therefore,  they  are  not 
as  strong  as  they  might  be.  And  yet,  in  a  more  per- 
ceptive and  really  truer  mode  of  judgment,  they  lack 


178  CHURCH    MEMBERSHIP 

that  kind  of  strength  just  because  they  have  too  nauch 
of  another,  which  is  deeper  and  more  satisfactory,  to 
suffer  it.  So  familiar  is  the  idea,  to  all  Jewish  minds, 
of  a  religious  oneness  in  parents  and  their  offspring, 
that  a  church  institution  of  any  kind,  arranged  to  in- 
clude parents  and  not  their  offspring,  would  even  have 
been  a  shocking  offense  to  the  nation.  Children  were . 
as  much  expected  to  be  with  their  parents  in  their 
religion,  as  they  were  to  be  in  their  sustentation.  Does 
any  one  doubt  that  children  were  citizens  in  the  old 
theocracy  ?  And  yet  I  recollect  no  passage  where  that 
sort  of  membership  with  their  parents  is  instituted,  or 
formally  asserted.  And  the  reason,  is  that  it  is  a  fact 
too  familiar,  too  close  to  the  sentiment  or  sense  of  na 
ture,  to  be  asserted.  We  can  even  see  for  ourselves 
that  they  look  upon  religious  faith  itself  as  a  kind  of 
hereditament  in  the  family,  descending  on  the  child  by 
laws  of  family  connexion,  where  it  is  not  hindered  by 
some  bad  fault  in  the  manners  and  walk  of  the  parents. 
Thus  we  hear  even  Paul  himself,  the  man  who  knew 
as  well  as  any  other,  and  taught  as  powerfully,  the  sig- 
nificance ©f  Christian  faith,  addressing  his  young  brother 
Timothy,  as  having  the  greater  confidence  in  his  faith 
because  it  is  hereditary — "  When  I  call  to  remembrance 
the  unfeigned  faith  that  is  in  thee,  which  dwelt  first  in 
thy  grandmother  Lois,  and  thy  mother  Eunice,  and  1 
am  persuaded  that  in  thee  also."  This  unfeigned,  this 
certainly  true  Christian  faith,  he  conceives  to  have  even 
leapt  the  gulf  between  the  old  religion  and  the  new, 
and   so   to   have   come  down   upon  him,    through   at 


OF    CHILDREN.  179 

least  two  generations  of  godly  motherhood  under  the 
law  and  before  the  coming  of  Jesus.  When  such  no- 
tions of  family  grace  are  familiar,  what  does  it  signify 
that  the  church  membership  of  children  is  not  formally 
asserted  ?  How  could  that  be  instituted  by  an  apos- 
tolic decree,  which  no  apostle,  or  man,  or  woman,  had 
ever  thought  could  be  otherwise  ? 

Over  and  above  these  more  direct  evidences,  for  the 
church  membership  of  baptized  children,  there  is  still 
another  kind  of  evidence  to  be  adduced,  which  has,  and 
very  properly  should  have,  much  weight.  I  allude  to 
the  opinions  of  the  church  and  her  most  qualified 
teachers,  from  the  apostolic  era  downward.  In  one 
sense,  the  mere  opinions  of  men  regarding  such  a  ques- 
tion are  of  little  consequence.  But  where  they  coin- 
cide with  the  known  practice  of  the  church  from  the 
earliest  times  downward,  and  show  the  practice  to  be 
grounded  in  the  same  reasons  of  organic  unity  and 
presumptive  grace  that  we  are  now  asserting,  they 
both  show  that  our  doctrine  is  no  novelty,  and  con- 
tribute a  powerful  evidence  in  support  of  its  original 
authenticity. 

Thus  I  have  cited  already  in  support  of  infant  bap- 
tism, passages  from  Justin  Martyr,  Ireneus,  Tertullian, 
Origen,  the  Shepherd  of  Hermas,  and  others,  which  not 
only  show  the  fact  of  infant  baptism,  but  discover  also, 
in  their  phraseology,  the  same  views  of  church  mem- 
bership that  I  am  now  asserting.  This  whole  view  of 
infant  membership,  as  it  stood  in  the  first  three  centu- 


180  CHUKCH    MEMBERSHIP 

ries  of  the  churcli  history,  appears  to  be  well  summed 
up,  both  as  regards  the  facts  and  the  reasons,  in  the 
following  statement  of  Neander : — 

"  It  is  the  idea  of  infant  baptism  that  Christ,  through 
the  divine  life  which  he  imparted  to,  and  revealed  in, 
human  nature,  sanctified  that  germ  from  its  earliest  de- 
velopment. The  child  born  in  a  Christian  family  was, 
when  all  things  were  as  they  should  be,  to  have  this 
advantage  over  others,  that  he  did  not  come  to  Chris- 
tianity out  of  heathenism  or  the  sinful  natural  life,  but 
from  the  first  dawning  of  consciousness  unfolded  his 
powers  under  the  imperceptible,  preventing  influences 
of  a  sanctifying,  ennobling  religion;  that  with  the 
earliest  germinations  of  the  natural  self-conscious  life, 
another  divine  principle  of  life,  transforming  the  nature, 
should  be  brought  nigh  to  him,  ere  yet  the  ungodly 
principle  could  come  into  full  activity,  and  the  latter 
should,  at  once,  find  here  its  powerful  counterpoise. 
In  such  a  life,  the  new  birth  was  not  to  constitute  a  new 
crisis,  beginning  at  some  definable  moment,  but  it  was 
to  begin  imperceptibly,  and  so  proceed  through  the 
whole  life.  Hence  baptism,  the  visible  sign  of  regen- 
eration, was  to  be  given  to  the  child  at  the  very  outset : 
the  child  was  to  be  consecrated  to  the  Redeemer  from 
the  very  beginning  of  its  life."* 

A  more  popular  and  practical  view  of  Christianity, 
as  seen  in  the  domestic  life  of  families,  and  one,  at  the 
same  time,  wholly  coincident,  is  given  by  Cave : — 

"  Gregory  Nazianzen  peculiarly  commends  his  mother, 

*  Neander's  Church  History,  Torrey's  translation,  pp.  311,  312. 


OF     CHILDREN.  181 

that  not  only  she  herself  was  consecrated  to  God,  and 
brought  up  under  a  pious  education,  but  that  she  con- 
veyed it  down,  as  a  necessary  inheritance,  to  her  chil- 
dren ;  and  it  seems  her  daughter  Gorgonia  was  so  well 
seasoned  with  these  holy  principles,  that  she  religiously 
walked  in  the  steps  of  so  good  a  pattern  ;  and  did  not 
only  reclaim  her  husband,  but  educated  her  children 
and  nephews  in  the  ways  of  religion,  giving  them  an 
excellent  example  while  she  lived,  and  leaving  this,  as 
her  last  charge  and  request  when  she  died.  *  *  * 
This  was  the  discipline  under  which  Christians  were 
brought  up  in  those  times.  Eeligion  was  instilled  into 
them  betimes,  which  grew  up  and  mixed  itself  with 
their  ordinary  labors  and  recreations.  *  *  *  *  So 
that  Jerome  says,  of  the  place  where  he  lived,  you 
could  not  go  into  the  field,  but  you  might  hear  the 
plowman  at  his  hallelujahs,  the  mower  at  his  hymns, 
and  the  vine-dresser  singing  David's  Psalms.""^ 

I  can  not  answer  for  an  exact  agreement  of  my  doc- 
trine with  that  of  Calvin.  It  must  be  sufficient  that  he 
recognizes  the  valid  possibility  of  a  regenerate  charac- 
ter, existing  long  before  it  is  formally  developed,  and 
the  propriety  of  infant  baptism  as  the  initiatory  rite  of 
membership.     He  says : — 

*'  Christ  was  sanctified  from  his  earliest  infancy,  that 
he  might  sanctify  in  himself  all  his  elect.  But  how,  it 
is  inquired,  are  infants  regenerated  who  have  no  knowl- 
edge either  of  good  or  evil  ?  We  reply  that  the  work 
of  God  is  not  yet  without  existence  because  it  is  not 


*  Primitive  Christianity,  pp.  173,  174. 


182  CHUKCH    MEMBERSHIP 

observed  or  understood  bj  us.  Now  it  is  certain 
that  some  infants  are  saved,  and  that  they  are  pre- 
viously regenerated  by  the  Lord  is  beyond  all  doubt. 
They  are  baptized  into  future  repentance  arid  faith; 
for  though  these  graces  have  not  yet  been  formed  in 
them,  the  seeds  of  both  are  nevertheless  implanted  in 
their  hearts  by  the  secret  operations  of  the  Spirit."* 

The  mercurial  mind  of  Baxter  penetrates  directly 
into  all  the  subtleties  of  the  question,  asserting  the  or- 
ganic unity  of  children  who  stand  accepted  in  the  cove- 
nant of  their  fathers ;  showing  how  regenerate  charac- 
ter is  to  begin,  seminally,  in  the  children  of  them  that 
believe,  and  get  the  start  of  sin  by  a  kind  of  gracious 
anticipation;  and  so  that,  in  this  view,  nurture  and 
growth  are  God's  way  of  unfolding  grace  in  the  church, 
as  preaching  and  conversion  are  his  method  of  grace 
with  them  that  are  without.  Which  three  points  are 
successively  asserted  in  the  following  passages : — 

"  Q. — Why  then  are  they  baptized  who  can  not 
covenant  ? 

"J.. — As  children  are  made  sinners  and  miserable  by 
the  parents,  without  any  act  of  their  own,  so  they  are 
delivered  out  of  it  by  the  free  grace  of  Christ,  upon  a 
condition  performed  by  their  parents.  Else  they  who 
are  visibly  born  in  sin  and  misery  should  have  no  cer- 
tain or  visible  way  of  remedy.  Nature  maketh  them, 
as  it  were,"  parts  of  their  parents,  or  so  near  as  causeth 
their  sin  and  misery.  And  this  nearness  supposed, 
God,  by  his  free  grace,  hath  put  it  in  the  power  of  the 

*  Ins.  cap.  xvi.  §  17,  18,  20. 


OF    CHILDREN.  183 

parents  to  accept  for  them  the  blessings  of  the  cove- 
nant, and  to  enter  them  into  the  covenant  of  God,  the 
parents'  will  being  instead  of  their  own,  who  have  yet 
no  will  to  choose  for  themselves."^ 

"Of  those  baptized  in  infancy,  some  do  betimes 
receive  the  secret  seeds  of  grace,  which,  by  the  bless- 
ings of  a  holy  education,  is  stirring  in  them  according 
to  their  capacity,  and  working  them  to  God  by  actual 
desires,  and  working  them  from  all  known  sin,  and 
entertaining  further  grace,  and  turning  them  into  actual 
acquaintance  with  Christ,  as  soon  as  they  arrive  at  full 
natural  capacity,  so  that  they  never  were  actual  ungodly 
persons."f 

"  Ungodly  parents  do  serve  the  devil  so  effectually, 
in  the  first  impressions  on  their  children's  minds,  that 
it  is  more  than  magistrates  and  ministers  and  all  reform- 
ing means  can  afterwards  do  to  recover  them  from  that 
sin  to  God.  Whereas,  if  you  would  first  engage  their 
hearts  to  God  by  a  religious  education,  piety  would  then 
have  all  those  advantages  that  sin  hath  now.  (Pro v. 
xxii.  6.)  The  language  which  you  teach  them  to  speak 
when  they  are  children,  they  will  use  all  their  life  after, 
if  they  live  with  those  that  use  it.  And  so  the  opinions 
which  they  first  receive,  and  the  customs  which  they 
are  used  to  at  first  are  very  hardly  changed  afterwards. 
I  doubt  not  to  affirm,  that  a  godly  education  is  God's  first 
and  ordinary  appointed  means,  for  the  begetting  of  actual 
faith  and  other  graces  in  the  children  of  believers.     Many 

*  Teacher  of  Householders,  fol.,  vol.  ii.,  p.  135. 
f  Confirmation,  fol.,  vol.  iv.,  p.  267. 


184  CHURCH    MEMBERSHIP 

have  received  grace  before ;  but  they  can  not  sooner  have 
actual  faith,  repentance,  love,  or  any  grace  than  they  may 
have  reason  itself,  in  act  and  exercise.  And  the  preach- 
ing of  the  word  by  public  ministers,  is  not  the  first 
ordinary  means  of  grace,  to  any  but  those  that  were 
graceless  till  they  come  to  hear  such  preaching ;  that 
is,  to  those  on  whom  the  first  appointed  means  hath 
been  neglected  or  proved  vain  •  *  *  ^  *  there- 
fore it  is  apparent  that  the  ordinary  appointed  means 
for  the  first  actual  grace,  is  parents'  godly  instruction  and 
education  of  their  children.  And  public  preaching  is 
appointed  for  the  conversion  of  those  only  that  have 
missed  the  blessing  of  the  first  appointed  means."* 

Our  New  England  fathers,  coming  out  as  they  did 
from  a  mode  of  church  economy  which  made  Chris- 
tian piety  itself  to  be  scarcely  more  than  baptism,  and 
passing  through  great  struggles  to  settle  a  scheme  of 
church  order  that  should  recognize  the  strict  individual- 
ity of  persons,  and  the  essential  personality  of  spiritual 
regeneration,  fell  off  for  a  time,  as  they  naturally  might, 
into  a  denial  of  the  great  underlying  principles  and  facts 
on  which  the  membership  of  baptized  children  in  the 
church  must  ever  be  rested.  In  the  Cambridge  Plat- 
form of  1649,  they  asserted  a  view  of  membership,  by 
which  it  was  to  be  rigidly  confined  to  such  as  appear  to 
be  renewed  persons.  Meantime  none  were  allowed  to 
be  qualified  as  voters  in  the  commonwealth,  except  in 
the  Hartford  and  Providence  colonies,  who  were  not 
members  of  the  church — the  same  principle  with  which 

*  Christian  Director}^,  vol.  ii.,  cap.  6,  §  4,  fol.  p.  516. 


OF    CHILDKEN.  185 

they  had  been  familiar  in  England.  The  result  was, 
under  their  individualizing  scheme  of  membership, 
that  they  began  to  find,  as  soon  as  their  sons  were 
grown  to  manhood,  that  many  of  them,  even  though 
baptized,  were,  in  fact,  aliens  in  the  state.  They 
could  not  vote  in  the  state,  and,  having  no  pretense  of 
faith,  could  not  baptize  their  children,  not  being  in  the 
church  themselves.  Another  synod  was  convened 
A.  D.  1662,  to  find  some  way  of  relieving  these  difficul- 
ties. And  they  hit  upon  the  rather  strange  expedient 
of  a  half-membership,  allowing  all  baptized  persons 
who  live  reputably,  and  give  a  speculative  assent  to  the 
gospel,  to  be  so  far  members  that  they  may  be  voters 
and  have  their  children  baptized.  This  decision  was 
stoutly  opposed  by  some  of  the  ablest  men  in  the  synod, 
and  great  debates  followed.  And  yet  as  the  facts  were 
reported  by  Cotton  Mather,  these  three  positions  were 
asserted  and  agreed  to  on  all  hands — even  though  the 
scheme  adopted  had  no  systematic  and  practical  agree- 
ment with  them,  or  ground  of  reason  in  them. 

1.  That  the  children  of  Christian  parents,  trained  in 
a  Christian  way,  often  grow  np  as  spiritually  renewed 
persons,  and  must  indeed  be  accounted  true  disciples 
of  Christ,  until  some  evidence  conclusive  to  the  con- 
trary is  given  by  their  conduct. 

"  Children  of  the  covenant  have  frequently  the  begin- 
ning of  grace  wrought  in  them  in  younger  years,  as 
Scripture  and  experience  show.  Instance  Joseph,  Sam- 
uel, David,  Solomon,  Abijah,  Josiah,  Daniel,  John 
Baptist,   Timothy.     Hence  this  sort  of  persons,   [bap- 


186  CHURCH    MEMBERSHIP 

tized  persons]  showing  nothing  to  the  contrary,  are,  in 
charity^  or  to  ecclesiastical  reputation,  visible  believers."* 

2.  That  baptism  supposes  an  initial  state  of  piety,  or 
some  right  beginning,  in  which  the  child  is  prepared 
unto  good,  by  causes  prior  to  his  own  will. 

"  We  are  to  distinguish  between  faith  and  the  hope- 
ful beginning  of  it,  the  charitable  judgment  whereof 
runs  upon  a  great  latitude,  and  faith  in  the  special  exer- 
cise of  it,  unto  the  visible  discovery  whereof,  more  ex- 
perienced operations  are  to  be  inquired  after.  The 
words  of  Dr.  Ames  are :  *  Children  are  not  to  be  ad- 
mitted to  partake  of  all  church  privileges,  till  first 
increase  of  faith  do  appear,  but  from  those  which  belong 
to  the  beginning  of  faith  and  entrance  into  the  church 
they  are  not  to  be  excluded.'  ""^ 

3.  That  there  is  a  kind  of  individualism  which  runs 
only  to  evil ;  that  the  church  is  designed  to  be  an  or- 
ganic, vital,  grace-giving  power,  and  thus  a  nursery  of 
spiritual  life  to  its  children. 

"  The  way  of  the  Anabaptists,  to  admit  none  to  mem- 
bership and  baptism  but  adult  professors,  is  the  straitest 
way;  one  would  think  it  should  be  a  way  of  great 
purity ;  but  experience  hath  shewed  that  it  has  been  an 
inlet  unto  great  corruption.  If  we  do  not  keep  in  the 
way  of  a  converting^  grace-giving  covenant,  and  keep  per- 
sons under  those  church  dispensations  wherein  grace  is 
given,  the  church  will  die  of  a  lingering  though  not 
violent  death.  The  Lord  hath  not  set  up  churches  only 
that  a  few  old  Christians  may  keep  one  another  warm 

*  Magnalia,  book  v.,  fol.  p.  72.  f  Magnalia,  book  v.,  fol.  p.  77. 


OF    CHILDREN.  187 

while  they  live,  and  then  carry  away  the  church  with 
them  when  they  die ;  no,  btit  that  they  might  with  all 
care,  and  with  all  the  obligations  and  advantages  to  that 
care  that  may  be,  nurse  still  successively  another  gen- 
eration of  subjects  to  our  Lord,  that  may  stand  up  in 
his  kingdom  when  they  are  gone."* 

Under  this  half-way  covenant,  and  probably  in  part 
because  of  it,  practical  religion  fell  into  a  state  of  great 
debility.  The  churches  lost  their  spirituality,  and  had 
well  nigh  lost  the  idea  of  spiritual  life  itself;  when  at 
length  the  Great  Eevival,  under  Whitfield  and  Ed- 
w^ards,  inaugurated  and  brought  up  to  its  highest  in- 
tensity the  new  era  of  individualism — the  same  over- 
wrought, misapplied  scheme  of  personal  experience  in 
religion,  which  has  continued  with  some  modifications 
to  the  present  day.  It  is  a  religion  that  begins  explo- 
sively, raises  high  frames,  carries  little  or  no  expansion, 
and  after  the  campaign  is  over,  subsides  into  a  torpor. 
Considered  as  a  distinct  era,  introduced  by  Edwards, 
and  extended  and  caricatured  by  his  cotemporaries,  it 
has  one  great  merit,  and  one  great  defect.  The  merit 
is  that  it  displaced  an  era  of  dead  formality,  and  brought 
in  the  demand  of  a  truly  supernatural  experience.  The 
defect  is,  that  it  has  cast  a  type  of  religious  individual- 
ism, intense  beyond  any  former  example.  It  makes 
nothing  of  the  family,  and  the  church,  and  the  organic 
powers  God  has  constituted  as  vehicles  of  grace.  It 
takes  every  man  as  if  he  had  existed  alone;  presumes 
that  he  is  unreconciled  to  God  until  he  has  undergone 

*  Magnalia,  book  v.,  fol,  p.  81. 


188  CHURCH    MEMBERSHIP 

some  sudden  and  explosive  experience  in  adult  years, 
or  after  the  age  of  reason ;  demands  that  experience,  and 
only  when  it  is  reached,  allows  the  subject  to  be  an  heir 
of  life.  Then,  on  the  other  side,  or  that  of  the  Spirit 
of  God,  the  very  act  or  ictus  by  which  the  change  is 
wrought  is  isolated  or  individualized,  so  as  to  stand  in 
no  connection  with  any  other  of  God's  means  or  causes 
— an  epiphany,  in  which  God  leaps  from  the  stars,  or 
some  place  above,  to  do  a  work  apart  from  all  system, 
or  connection  with  his  other  works.  Eeligion  is  thus  a 
kind  of  transcendental  matter,  which  belongs  on  the 
outside  of  life,  and  has  no  part  in  the  law^s  by  which 
life  is  organized — a  miraculous  epidemic,  a  fire-ball  shot 
from  the  moon,  something  holy,  because  it  is  from  God, 
but  so  extraordinary,  so  out  of  place,  that  it  can  not 
suffer  any  vital  connection  with  the  ties,  and  causes, 
and  forms,  and  habits,  which  constitute  the  frame  of  our 
history.  Hence  the  desultory,  hard,  violent,  and  often 
extravagant  or  erratic  character  it  manifests.  Hence, 
in  part,  the  dreary  years  of  decay  and  darkness,  that 
interspace  our  months  of  excitement"  and  victory. 

Even  Edwards  himself,  fifteen  years  after  the  Great 
Revival,  began  to  be  oppressed  with  sorrowful  convic- 
tions of  some  great  defect  in  the  matter  and  mode  of 
it,  confessing  his  doubt  whether  "  the  greater  part  of 
supposed  converts  give  reason,  by  their  conversation,  to 
suppose  that  they  continue  converts ;"  protesting,  also, 
his  special  confidence  in  the  fruits  of  family  religion  in 
terms  like  these — 

"  Every  Christian  family  ought  to  be,  as  it  wer»  ' 


OF    CHILDREN.  189 

little  church,  consecrated  to  Christ,  and  wholly  influ- 
enced and  governed  by  his  rules.  And  family  education 
and  order  are  some  of  the  chief  meaiis  of  grace.  If  these 
fail,  all  other  means  are  likely  to  prove  ineffectual."* 

Dr.  Hopkins,  a  pupil  of  Edwards,  had  probably  been 
turned  by  suggestions  from  him,  to  a  consideration  of 
the  importance  of  family  nurture  and  piety,  as  .con- 
nected with  the  propagation  of  religion  ;  and,  as  if  to 
supply  some  defect  in  this  direction,  he  occupied  sixty 
pages  in  his  System  of  Divinity,  with  a  careful  discus- 
sion of  the  "  nature  and  design  of  infant  baptism."  In 
this  article,  he  goes  even  beyond  the  notion  of  a  pre- 
sumptive piety  in  the  children  baptized,  and  says: — 
"  The  church  receive  and  look  upon  them  as  holy,  and 
those  who  shall  be  saved.  So  they  are  as  visibly  holy, 
or  as  really  holy,  in  their  view,  as  their  parents  are."t 

How  far  his  theory  of  conversion  would  compel  him 
to  isolate  the  act  of  Grod  by  which  the  spiritual  renova- 
tion of  a  soul  is  wrought,  I  will  not  undertake  to  de- 
cide. Enough,  that  he  asserts  an  organic  connection  of 
character  between  parents  and  children,  as  effectual  for 
good  as  for  evil ;  nay,  that  they  may  as  truly,  and  in 
the  same  sense,  transmit  holiness  as  they  transmit  ex- 
istence. Thus,  after  asserting,  not  more  clearly  or  decid- 
edly than  I  have  done,  the  impossibility  that  parents 
should  spiritually  renew  their  children,  considered  as 
acting  by  themselves,  he  says : — 

"  But  it  does  not  follow  from  this,  that  God  has  not 
so  constituted  the  covenant  of  grace,  that  holiness  shall 

♦Vol.  i.  p.  90.  f  Vol.  ii.  p.  319. 


190  CHURCH    MEMBERSHIP 

be  communicated,  by  Him,  to  the  children,  in  conse- 
quence of  the  faithful  endeavors  of  their  parents ;  so 
that,  in  this  sense,  and  by  virtue  of  such  a  constitution, 
they  do  by  their  faithful  endeavors  convey  saving  bless- 
ings to  their  children.  In  this  way  they  give  existence 
to  their  children.  God  produces  their  existence  by  his 
own  Almighty  energy ;  but,  by  the  constitution  he  has 
established,  they  receive*  their  existence  from  their  pa- 
rents, or  by  their  means.  By  an  established  constitu- 
tion, parents  convey  moral  depravity  to  their  children. 
And  if  God  has  been  pleased  to  make  a  constitution 
and  appoint  a  way,  in  his  covenant  of  grace  with  man, 
by  which  pious  parents  may  convey  and  communicate 
moral  rectitude  or  holiness  to  their  children,  they,  by 
using  the  appointed  means,  do  it  as  really  and  effectually 
as  they  communicate  existence  to  them.  In  this  sense, 
therefore,  they  may  convey  and  give  holiness  and  salva- 
tion to  their  children."* 

Dr.  Witherspoon,  a  cotemporary  of  Dr.  Hopkins, 
held  opinions  on  this  subject  that  were  in  a  high  degree 
coincident,  though  presented  in  a  more  popular  and  less 
doctrinal  shape.     He  says : — 

"I  will  not  enlarge  on  some  refined  remarks  of 
persons  as  distinguished  for  learning  as  piety,  some 
of  whom  have  supposed  that  they  [children]  are  capa- 
ble of  receiving  impressions  of  desire  and  aversion,  and 
even  of  moral  temper,  particularly  of  love  or  hatred,  in 
the  first  year  of  their  lives.  -5^  *  *  When  the  gos- 
pel comes  to  a  people  that  have  long  sitten  in  darkness, 

♦Pages  334,  335. 


OF    CHILDREN.  191 

tliere  may  be  numerous  converts  of  all  ages ;  but  when 
the  gospel  has  long  been  preached,  in  plenty  and  purity, 
and  ordinances  regularly  administered,  few  but  those 
who  are  called  in  early  life  are  called  at  all.  A  very 
judicious  and  pious  writer,  Eichard  Baxter,  is  of  opin- 
ion that  in  a  regular  state  of  the  church,  and  a  tolerable 
measure  of  faithfulness  and  purity  in  its  officers,  family 
instruction  and  government  are  the  usual  means  of  con- 
version, public  ordinances  of  edification.  This  seems 
agreeable  to  the  language  of  Scripture ;  for  we  are  told 
that  God  hath  set  in  the  church  apostles,  prophets,  evan- 
gelists, pastors  and  teachers,  (not  for  converting  sinners, 
but)  for  the  perfecting  of  the  saints,  for  the  work  of  the 
ministry,  for   the  edifying  of  the  body  of  Christ."* 

From  all  these  citations,  which  could  be  multiplied 
without  limit,  it  will  be  seen  that  the  children  of  Chris- 
tian parents  have  been  looked  upon  as  being  heirs  of 
the  parental  faith,  and  presumptively  included  in  that 
faith ;  and  so,  either  with  or  without  a  distinct  assertion 
of  the  proper  church  membership  of  children,  such 
opinions  have  been  held  in  all  ages  respecting  them, 
as  make  the  denial  of  their  membership  a  clear  impro- 
priety and  even  a  kind  of  offense  against  nature. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  add,  in  closing  this  subject, 
that  if  children  baptized  are  so  far  accepted  as  members 
of  the  Christian  church,  it  must  be  a  great  fault  and  a 
most  hurtful  dereliction  of  duty  that  nothing  is  practi- 
cally made  of  this  membership,  and  that  really  it  f)as.ses 

*  Witherspoon,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  395,  397. 


192  CHURCH    MEMBERSHIP 

for  a  thing  of  no  significance.  The  rite  is  appointed 
because  it  has  a  meaning  and  a  value,  and  then,  when 
it  is  passed,  it  is  treated  in  a  way  that  even  indicates  the 
possible  absurdity  of  it.  That  the  children  will  see  any 
thing  in  such  a  mode  of  practice  is  impossible.  And  it 
requires  but  the  smallest  possible  perception,  to  see  that 
the  rite  will,  in  this  manner,  be  regularly  sinking  into 
discredit,  till  it  is  quite  done  away,  and  the  value  it 
might  have  in  the  church  is  lost.  To  accomplish  all 
that  is  needed  to  give  full  effect  to  the  rite — 

Baptized  children  ought  to  be  enrolled  by  name  in 
the  catalogue  of  each  church,  as  composing  a  distinct 
class  of  candidate,  or  catechumen,  members  ;  and  to  see 
that  they  are  held  in  expectancy,  thus,  by  the  church, 
as  presumptively  one  with  them  in  the  faith  they 
profess. 

Then,  when  they  come  forward  to  acknowledge  their 
baptism,  and  assume  the  covenant  in  their  own  choice, 
they  ought  not  to  be  received  as  converts  from  the 
world,  as  if  they  were  heathens  coming  into  the  fold,  but 
there  should  be  a  distinction  preserved,  such  as  makes 
due  account  of  their  previous  qualified  membership  ;  a 
form  of  assumption  tendered  in  place  of  a  confession — 
something  answering  to  the  Lutheran  confirmation^ 
passed  without  a  bishop's  hands. 

Children,  as  soon  as  they  are  well  out  of  their  infancy, 
ought  to  be  taken  also  to  the  stated  meetings  of  fellow- 
ship and  prayer,  drawn  into  all  the  moods  of  worship, 
praise,  supplication,  reproof,  as  being  rightfully  con- 
cerned in  them,   on   the  score   of  their  membership. 


OF    CHILDEEN.  193 

There  ougtit  to  be  a  great  deal  made  of  singing  too  in 
such  meetings,  that  they  may  join  their  voices  and  play 
into  expression  their  own  tribute  of  feeling  and  Chris- 
tian sentiment. 

Whenever  there  are  orphan  children,  that  have  been 
baptized,  the  church  ought  to  look  after  them,  as  being 
members ;  see,  if  possible,  that  they  are  not  neglected, 
but  trained  up  in  a  Christian  manner ;  provided,  if  need 
be,  with  a  godly  fatherhood  and  motherhood  in  the 
church  itself;  led  into  the  church  and  out  into  the 
world,  as  disciples  beloved  according  to  their  years. 

Meantime,  it  is  a  matter  of  prime  significance  that 
the  Christian  father  and  mother  should  live  so  as  to  indi- 
cate a  sense  of  their  privilege  and  responsibility ;  even 
as  Abraham  did  when  he  sojourned  in  the  land  of 
promise,  as  in  a  strange  country,  dwelling  in  tents  with 
Isaac  and  Jacob,  heirs  with  him  of  the  same  'promise.  It 
is  one  thing  to  live  for  a  family  of  children,  as  if  they 
were  going  possibly  to  be  converted,  and  a  very  differ- 
ent to  live  for  them  as  church  members,  training  them 
into  their  holy  profession;  one  thing  to  have  them 
about  as  strangers  to  the  covenant  of  promise,  and  an- 
other to  have  them  about  as  heirs  of  the  same  promise, 
growing  up  into  it,  to  fulfill  the  seal  of  faith  already 
upon  them.  One  great  reason  why  the  children  of 
Christian  parents  turn  out  so  badly  is,  that  they  are 
taken  to  be  the  world,  and  the  manner  and  spirit  of  the 
house  are  brought  down  to  be  of  the  world  too,  and 
partly  for  their  sake.  Take  them  as  disciples  of  Jesus, 
to  be  carefully  trained  for  Him ;  prepared  to  no  mere 


194  CHURCH    MEMBERSHIP. 

worldly  tastes,  and  fashions,  and  pleasures,  but  kept  in 
purity,  saved  from  tlie  world,  and  led  forth  under  all 
tender  examples  of  obedience  and  godly  living ;  and  it 
will  be  strange  if  that  nurture  of  the  Lord  does  not 
show  them  growing  up  in  the  faith,  to  be  sons  and 
daughters,  indeed,  of  the  Lord  Almighty. 


VIII. 

THE  OUT-POPULATING  POWER  OF  THE  CHRIS- 
TIAN  STOCK. 

"And  did  he  not  make  one?    Yet  had  he  the  residue  of  the  Spirit. 
And  wherefore  one  ?    That  he  might  have  a  godly  seed." — Malachi^  ii.  15. 

The  prophet  is  enforcing  here  a  strict  observance  of 
marriage.  And  lie  adverts,  in  his  argament,  to  the  sin- 
gle and  sole  state  of  the  first  human  pair,  as  a  standing 
proof  against  polygamy,  inconstancy,  and  all  similar 
abuses  of  the  marriage  state.  God  was  not  spent,  he 
says,  in  creating  a  single  man,  Adam,  and  a  single 
woman.  Eve,  but  he  had  such  a  residue,  or  overplus  of 
creative  energy  left,  that  he  could  have  created  millions 
if  he  would.  Wherefore  then  did  he  cease,  producing 
only  just  one  man  and  woman,  and  no  more?  The 
answer  is — That  he  might  have  a  godly  seed.  In  that 
lies  the  reason,  he  declares,  of  God's  economy  in  this 
family  institution.     We  perceive,  accordingly. 

That  God  is^from  thefirst^  looking  for  a  godly  seed;  or^ 
what  is  nowise  different^  inserting  such  laivs  of  population 
that  piety  itself  shall  finally  over-populate  the  luorld. 

To  be  more  explicit,  there  are,  too,  principal  modes  by 
which  the  kingdom  of  God  among  men  may  be,  and  is 
to  be  extended.  One  is  by  the  process  of  conversion,  and 
the  other  by  that  of  fomily  propagation ;  one  by  gain- 


196  THE    OUT-POPULATING    POWER 

ing  over  to  the  side  of  faith  and  piety,  the  other  by  the 
populating  force  of  faith  and  piety  themselves.  The 
former  is  the  grand  idea  that  has  taken  possession  of  the 
churches  of  our  times — they  are  going  to  convert  the 
world.  They  have  taken  hold  of  the  promise,  which 
so  many  of  the  prophets  have  given  out,  of  a  time  when 
the  reign  of  Christ  shall  be  universal,  extending  to  all 
nations  and  peoples;  and  the  expectation  is  that,  by 
preaching  Christ  to  all  the  nations,  they  will  finally 
convert  them  and  bring  them  over  into  the  gospel  fold. 
Meantime  very  much  less,  or  almost  nothing,  is  made 
of  the  other  method,  viz :  that  of  Christian  population. 
Indeed,  as  we  are  now  looking  at  religion,  or  religious 
character  and  experience,  we  can  hardly  find  a  place  for 
any  such  thought  as  a  possible  reproduction  thus  of 
parental  character  and  grace  in  children.  They  must 
come  in  by  choice,  on  their  own  account ;  they  must  be 
converted  over  from  an  outside  life  that  has  grown  to 
maturity  in  sin.  Are  they  not  individuals,  and  how 
are  they  to  be  initiated  into  any  thing  good  by  inherit- 
ance and  before  choice  ?  It  is  as  if  they  were  all  so 
many  Melchisedecs  in  their  religious  nature,  only  not 
righteous  at  all — without  father,  without  mother,  without 
descent.  Descent  brings  them  nothing.  Born  of  faith, 
and  bosomed  in  it,  and  nurtured  by  it,  still  there  is  yet 
to  be  no  faith  begotten  in  them,  nor  so  much  as  a  con- 
tagion even  of  faith  to  be  caught  in  their  garments. 

What  I  propose,  at  the  present  time,  is  to  restore,  if 
possible,  a  juster  impression  of  this  great  subject;  to 
show  that  conversion  over  to  the  church  is  not  the  only 


OF    THE    CHRISTIAN    STOCK.  197 

way  of  increase ;  that  God  ordains  a  law  of  population 
in  it  as  truly  as  lie  does  in  an  earthly  kingdom,  or  colo- 
ny, and  by  this  increase  from  within,  quite  as  much 
as  by  conversion  from  without,  designs  to  give  it,  finally, 
the  complete  dominion  promised. 

Nor  let  any  one  be  repelled  from  this  truth,  or  set 
against  it,  by  the  prejudice  that  piety  is  and  must  be  a 
matter  of  individual  choice.  The  same  is  true  of  sin. 
Many  of  us  have  no  difficulty  in  saying  that  mankind 
are  born  sinners.  They  may  just  as  truly  and  properly 
be  born  saints — it  requires  the  self-active  power  to  be 
just  as  far  developed  to  commit  sin,  as  it  does  to  choose 
obedience.  This  individual  capacity  of  will  and  choice 
is  one  that  matures  at  no  particular  tick  of  the  clock, 
but  it  comes  along  out  of  incipiencies,  grows  by  imper- 
ceptible increments,  and  takes  on  a  character,  in  good 
or  evil,  or  a  mixed  character  in  both,  so  imperceptibly 
and  gradually,  that  it  seems  to  be,  in  some  sense,  pre- 
fashioned  by  what  the  birth  and  nurture  have  communi- 
cated. We  may  fitly  enough  call  this  character  a  prop- 
agated quality — in  strictest  metaphysical  definition,  it  is 
not ;  in  sturdiest  fact  of  history,  or  practical  life,  it  is. 

Nor  let  any  one  be  diverted  from  the  truth  I  am 
going  to  assert,  by  imagining  that  a  propagated  piety  is, 
of  course,  a  piety  without  regeneration,  dispensing  with 
what  Christ  himself  declared  to  be  the  indispensable 
need  of  every  human  creature.  For  aught  that  appears, 
regeneration  may,  in  some  initial  and  profoundly  real 
sense,  be  the  twin  element  of  propagation  itself  The 
parentage    may,    in    other    words,   be    so    thoroughly 


198  THE    OUT-POPULATING    POWER 

wrouglit  in  by  tlie  Spirit  of  God,  as  to  communicate 
the  seeds  or  incipiencies  of  a  godly,  just  as  it  communi- 
cates the  seeds  of  a  depravated  and  disordered,  char- 
acter. In  one  view,  the  child  will  be  regenerate  when  he 
is  born ;  in  another  view,  he  will  not  be,  till  the  godly 
life  is  developed  in  his  own  personal  choice  and  liberty. 
Dismissing  these,  and  other  like  prepossessions,  let  us 
go  on  to  examine  some  of  the  evidences  by  which  this 
doctrine  of  church  population  is  to  be  substantiated. 

1.  I  name,  as  an  evidence,  the  very  important  fact 
that  in  the  matter  of  infant  baptism  and  infant  church 
membership,  grounded  as  they  are  in  the  assumption 
that  a  believing  parentage  sanctifies  the  offspring,  God 
is  seen  to  frame  the  order  of  church  economy,  so  as  to 
bring  in  the  law  of  increase,  or  family  propagation ; 
looking  to  the  populating  principle  for  growth,  just  as 
the  founder  of  a  new  colony,  on  some  foreign  shore, 
would  look.  He  declares  that  parents  are  to  be  parents 
in  the  Lord,  and  children  to  grow  up  in  the  nurture  of 
the  Lord.  The  whole  scheme  of  organic  unity  in  the 
family  and  of  family  grace  in  the  church,  is  just  what 
it  should  be,  if  the  design  were  to  propagate  religion, 
not  by  conversions  only,  but  quite  as  much,  or  more, 
by  the  populating  force  embodied  in  it — just  that  force 
which,  in  all  states  and  communities,  is  known  to  be  the 
most  majestic  and  silently  creative  force  in  their  history. 

2.  It  is  a  matter  of  consequence  to  observe,  that  the 
Abrahamic  order  and  covenant  stood  upon  this  footing, 
formally  proposing  and  promising  to  make  the  father 
of  the  faithful  a  blessing  to  mankind,  by  and  through  the 


OF    THE    CHRISTIAN"    STOCK.  199 

miiltitude  of  his  offspring,  "  Look  now,"  says  tlie  word 
of  promise,  "  toward  heaven  and  tell  the  stars,  if  thou  be 
able  to  number  them.  So  shall  thy  seed  be."  Again, 
"I  will  make  thee  a  father  of  many  nations."  And 
again,  "  All  the  nations  of  the  earth  shall  be  blessed  in 
him."  Neither  was  it  to  be  the  only  blessing,  that 
Jesus,  the  Saviour  of  mankind,  was  to  be  born  of  this 
honored  family.  "I  will  make  thee  exceeding  fruit- 
ful," was  the  form  of  the  promise ;  and  the  blessing,  as 
we  may  see,  by  all  the  modes  of  expression  used,  was 
to  turn  as  much  on  the  wonderful  populousness  of  the 
stock,  overspreading  the  world,  as  it  was,  on  the  new- 
creating  grace  to  be  unfolded  in  it.  For  if  it  be  matter 
of  debate,  in  what  precise  manner,  the  Christian  church 
has  connection  with  this  more  ancient  and  apparently 
mere  family  bond,  there  is  certainly  no  doubt  in  the 
mind  of  the  great  Christian  apostle,  that  there  is  a  real 
and  valid  connection  of  some  kind,  such  that  the  prom- 
ise passes  and  spreads,  and  is  to  get  its  fulfillment,  only 
when  the  godly  seed  has  filled  the  world.  The  spread 
of  Christianity  is,  in  his  view,  the  blessing  of  Abraham 
come  on  the  Gentiles,  through  Jesus  Christ.  These 
Gentile  converts,  too,  he  calls  the  seed  of  Abraham — 
"And  if  ye  be  Christ's,  then  are  ye  Abraham's  seed  and 
heirs  according  to  the  promise."  He  looks,  you  will 
perceive,  on  the  Gentile  converts  as  being  grafted  in 
upon  the  ancient  stock ;  which  also  he  expressly  says, 
in  another  place,  counting  them  to  be  so  unified  with 
Abraham,  as  to  be  the  outgrowth  of  his  person.  Just 
as  the  proselytes  were  taken  to  be  sons  and  daughters 


200  THE    OUT-POPULATING    POWER 

of  Abraham,  naturalized  into  his  stock,  so  are  these 
converts  to  become  the  channel  of  his  over-populating 
force,  till  such  time  as  the  natural  branches,  broken  oflf, 
are  grafted  in  again.  And,  in  this  view,  it  is  that  the 
Gentile  converts  are  called  "  a  seed^''  that  being  the  word 
that  contemplates  the  fact  of  their  multiplication  as  a 
family  of  God. 

8.  It  is  an  argument  which  ought  to  be  convinc- 
ing, that  the  universal  spread  of  the  gospel,  and  the 
universal  reign  of  Christian  truth — that  which  proph- 
ets and  apostles  promise,  and  which  we,  in  these  last 
times,  have  taken  up  as  our  fondest,  most  impelling 
Christian  hope — plainly  enough  never  can  be  compassed 
by  the  process  of  adult  conversions,  but  must  finally  be 
reached,  if  reached  at  all,  by  the  populating  forces  of  a 
family  grace  in  the  church.  We  expect  that,  in  that 
day,  all  flesh  shall  see  the  salvation  of  God,  and  that 
every  thing  human  will  be  regenerated  by  it ;  that  the 
glory  of  God  will  cover  the  earth  like  a  baptism  of 
water — even  as  the  waters  cover  the  sea.  These  are  to 
be  the  times  of  the  restitution  of  all  things.  God,  we 
believe,  will  put  his  laws  now  in  the  mind,  and  write 
them  on  the  heart,  and  "  all  shall  know  him  from  the 
least  to  the  greatest."  I  do  not  care  to  press  these  epi- 
thets least  and  greatest — perhaps  there  is  no  reference  to 
children  in  them.  It  would  scarcely  make  the  text 
more  significant  if  there  were;  for  this  universal  tri- 
umph of  the  word,  in  which  we  all  believe,  this  im- 
printing of  it  on  men's  hearts,  all  over  the  world,  in 
such  manner  as  to  make  the  day  of  glory — that  great 


OF    THE    CHRISTIAN    STOCK.  201 

day  of  light  which  figures  so  grandly  in  the  visions  of 
God's  prophets  and  apostles,  and  is  promised  by  Christ 
himself — such  a  day,  I  say,  can  plainly  enough  never  be 
reached,  as  long  as  the  children  of  the  world  grow  "up  in 
sin,  as  we  now  assume  to  be  the  fact,  still  to  be  called 
and  prayed  for  as  now  and  preached  into  the  kingdom. 
When  the  little  child  shall  lead  forth  in  pairs  the  wolf 
and  the  lamb,  the  leopard  and  the  kid,  the  calf  and  the 
young  lion ;  when  the  sucking  child  shall  play  on  the 
hole  of  the  asp  unstung,  and  the  weaned  child  shall  put 
his  hand  unbitten  on  the  cockatrice's  den ;  we  not  only 
take  hold  of  it  as  the  prophet's  meaning  that  there  is  to 
be  a  great  universal  mitigation  of  the  ferocities  of  appe- 
tite, and  prey,  and  passion,  in  the  world,  but  that  the 
little  ones  are  to  have  their  part  in  the  joy,  and  be 
raised  in  dominion  by  that  all-renewing  grace  which 
has  now  restored  and  imparadised  the  world.  Otherwise 
our  day  of  glory  would  be  such  a  kind  of  jubilee  as 
shows  'the  adult  souls  only  of  the  race  to  be  gathered 
into  the  kingdom,  while  the  poor,  unripe  sinners  of 
childhood,  a  full  fourth  in  the  total  number,  are  in  no 
sense,  in  it,  but  are  waiting  their  conversion-time  on 
the  outside  !  This  is  not  our  millennial  day ;  we  have 
no  such  hope. 

We  conceive  that  Christ  will  then  overspread  all  souls 
with  his  glory,  and  that  children,  filled  according  to 
their  age  and  measure  with  the  divine  motions  of  grace, 
will  be  unfolding  the  heavenly  beauty,  as  they  advance 
in  years,  even  as  the  flowers  unfold  their  colors  in  the 
sun.     These  colors  no  one  sees  in  the  root,  and  the 


202  THE    OUT-POPULATING    POWER 

clear,  transparent  sap  it  circulates,  and  yet  the  color  ia 
there.  Just  so  will  God,  in  that  great  day  of  grace, 
bring  out  of  infancy  and  childhood,  sanctify  in  gly 
touched  by  his  Spirit,  what  creates  them  children  of 
God,  as  truly  as  their  parents,  though  too  subtle  to  be 
seen,  or  defined,  till  it  has  blushed  into  color,  in  the 
sunlight  of  their  intelligence  in  the  truth.  Such  a  day 
of  glory  then  contemplates  a  great  in-birth  of  sanctifi- 
cation,  or  renewing  life.  Conversions  from  without  are 
to  have  their  part  in  preparing  it,  but  the  consumma- 
tion hoped  for  is  even  impossible,  as  regards  a  third  or 
fourth  part  of  the  race,  save  as  it  is  reached  by  a  popu- 
lating process  which  enters  them  into  life  itself,  through 
the  gate  of  a  sanctified  infancy  and  childhood. 

4.  Consider  a  very  important  fact  in  human  physiol- 
ogy which  goes  far  to  explain,  or  take  away  the  strange- 
ness and  seeming  extravagance  of  the  truth  I  am  en- 
deavoring to  establish,  viz.,  that  qualities  of  education, 
habit,  feeling,  and  character,  have  a  tendency  always 
to  grow  in,  by  long  continuance,  and  become  thor- 
oughly inbred  in  the  stock.  We  meet  humble  analo- 
gies of  this  fact  in  the  domestic  animals.  The  opera- 
tions to  which  they  are  trained,  and  in  which  they 
become  naturalized  by  habit,  become  predispositions,  in 
a  degree,  in  their  offspring ;  and  they,  in  their  turn,  are 
as  much  more  easily  trained  on  that  account.  The 
next  generation  are  trained  still  more  easily,  till  what 
was  first  made  habitual,  finally  becomes  functional  in 
the  stock,  and  almost  no  training  is  wanted.  That 
which  was  inculcated  by  practice  passes  into  a  ten- 


OF    THE     CHRISTIAN    STOCK.  203 

dency,  and  descends  as  a  natural  gift,  or  endowment. 
The  same  thing  is  observable,  on  a  large  scale,  in  the 
families  of  mankind.  A  savage  race  is  a  race  bred  into 
low  living,  and  a  faithless,  bloody  character.  The  in- 
stinct of  law,  society,  and  order  is  substituted,  finally, 
by  the  overgrown  instinct  of  prey,  and  the  race  is  lost 
to  any  real  capacity  of  social  regeneration ;  unless  they 
can  somehow  be  kept  in  ward,  and  a  process  of  train- 
ing, long  enough  to  breed  in  what  has  been  lost.  A 
race  of  slaves  becomes  a  physiologically  servile  race  in 
the  same  way.  And  so  it  is,  in  part,  that  civilization 
descends  from  one  generation  to  another.  It  is  not 
merely  that  laws,  social  modes,  and  instrumentalities  of 
education  descend,  and  that  so  the  new  sprung  genera- 
tions are  fashioned  after  birth,  by  the  forms  and  princi- 
ples and  causes  into  which  they  have  been  set,  but  it  is 
that  the  very  type  of  the  inborn  quality  is  a  civilized 
type.  The  civilization  is,  in  great  part,  aH  inbred 
civility.  There  is  a  something  functional  in  them, 
which  is  itself  configured  to  the  state  of  art,  order,  law, 
and  property. 

The  Jewish  race  are  a  striking  and  sad  proof  of  the 
manner  in  which  any  given  mode  of  life  may,  or  rather 
must,  become  a  functional  property  in  the  offspring. 
The  old  Jewish  stock  of  the  Scripture  times,  whatever 
faults  they  may  have  had,  certainly  were  not  marked 
by  any  such  miserably,  sordid,  usurious,  garbage-vend- 
ing propensity,  as  now  distinguishes  the  race.  But  the 
cruelties  they  have  suffered  under  Christian  govern- 
ments, shut  up  in  the  Jews'  quarter  of  the  great  cities, 


204  THE    OUT-POPULATING    POWER 

dealing  in  old  clothes  and  other  mean  articles  for  their 
gains,  hiding  these  in  the  shape  of  gold  and  jewels  in 
the  crevices  of  their  cellars,  to  prevent  seizure  by  the 
emissaries  of  the  governments,  and  disguising  their 
prosperity  itself  by  the  squalid  dress  of  their  persons — 
these,  continued  from  age  to  age,  have  finally  bred  in 
the  character  we  so  commonly  speak  of  with  contempt. 
Our  children,  treated  as  they  have  been  for  so  many 
generations,  would  finally  reveal  the  marks  of  their 
wrongs  in  the  same  sordid,  miserly  instincts. 

Xow  if  it  be  true  that  what  gets  power  in  any  race, 
by  a  habit  or  a  process  of  culture,  tends  by  a  fixed  law 
of  nature  to  become  a  propagated  quality,  and  pass  by 
descent  as  a  property  inbred  in  the  stock ;  if  in  this  way 
.  whole  races  of  men  are  cultivated  into  properties  that 
are  peculiar — off  into  a  savage  character,  down  into  a 
servile  or  a  mercenary,  up  into  civilization  or  a  high 
social  state — what  is  to  be  the  effect  of  a  thoroughly 
Christian  fatherhood  and  motherhood,  continued  for  a 
long  time  in  the  successive  generations  of  a  family? 
What  can  it  be  but  a  general  mitigation  of  the  bad 
points  of  the  stock,  and  a  more  and  more  completely 
inbred  piety.  The  children  of  such  a  stock  are  born, 
not  of  the  flesh  only,  or  the  mere  natural  life  of  their 
parentage,  but  they  are  born,  in  a  sense  most  emphatic, 
of  the  Spirit  also ;  for  this  parentage  is  differed,  as  we 
are  supposing,  age  by  age,  from  its  own  mere  nature  in 
Adam,  by  the  inhabiting  grace  of  a  supernatural  salva- 
tion. Physiologically  speaking,  they  are  tempered  by 
this  grace,  and  it  is  all  the  while  tending  to  become,  in 


OF    THE    CHRISTIAN    STOCK.  205 

some  sense,  an  inbred  quality.  Hence  tlie  very  fre- 
quent remark — "  How  great  a  privilege  and  order 
of  nobility  to  be  descended  of  a  pious  ancestry!" 
It  is  the  blessing  that  is  to  descend  to  tlie  thou- 
sandth generation  of  them  that  love  God  and  keep  his 
commandments. 

In  this  view  it  is  to  be  expected,  as  the  life  of  Chris- 
tian piety  becomes  more  extended  in  the  earth,  and  the 
Spirit  of  God  obtains  a  living  power,  in  the  successive 
generations,  more  and  more  complete,  that  finally  the 
race  itself  will  be  so  thoroughly  regenerated  as  to  have 
a  genuinely  populating  power  in  faith  and  godliness. 
By  a  kind  of  ante-natal  and  post-natal  nurture  combined, 
the  new-born  generations  will  be  started  into  Christian 
piety,  and  the  world  itself  over-populated  and  taken 
possession  of  by  a  truly  sanctified  stock.  This  I  con- 
ceive to  be  the  expectation  of  Christianity.  Not  that 
the  bad  heritage  of  depravity  will  cease,  but  that  the 
second  Adam  will  get  into  power  with  the  first,  and  be 
entered  seminally  into  the  same  great  process  of  propa- 
gated life.  And  this  fulfills  that  primal  desire  of  the 
world's  Creator  and  Father,  of  which  the  prophet 
speaks — "  That  he  might  have  a  godly  seed." 

And  let  no  one  be  offended  by  this,  as  if  it  supposed 
a  possible  in-growth  and  propagation  of  piety,  by  mere 
natural  laws  and  conditions.  What  higher  ground  of 
supernaturalism  can  be  taken,  than  that  which  sup- 
poses a  capacity  in  the  Incarnate  "Word,  and  Sanctify- 
ing Spirit,  to  penetrate  our  fallen  nature,  at  a  point  so 
deep  as  to  cover  the  whole  spread  of  the  fall,  and  be  a 


206  THE    OUT-POPULATIKG    POWER 

grace  of  life,  traveling  outward  from  the  earliest  most 
latent  germs  of  our  liuman  development.  It  is  only 
saying,  with  a  meaning — "  My  substance  was  not  hid 
from  Thee,  when  I  was  made  in  secret,  and  curiously 
wrought  in  the  lowest  parts  of  the  earth."  Or,  in 
still  another  view,  it  is  only  conceiving  that  those 
sporadic  cases  of  sanctification  from  the  womb,  of  which 
the  Scripture  speaks,  such  as  that  of  Samuel,  Jere- 
miah, and  John,  are  to  finally  become  the  ordinary 
and  common  fact  of  family  development. 

In  such  cases,  the  faith  or  piety  of  a  single  pair,  or 
possibly  of  the  mother  alone,  begets  a  heavenly  mold 
in  the  predispositions  of  the  offspring,  so  that,  as  it  .is 
born  of  sin,  it  is  also  born  of  a  heavenly  grace.  If 
then  we  suppose  the  heavenly  grace  to  have  such 
power,  in  the  long  continuing  process  of  ages,  as  to 
finally  work  the  general  stock  of  parentage  into  its 
own  heavenly  mold,  far  enough  to  prepare  a  sanctified 
offspring  for  the  world,  what  higher,  grander  fact  of 
Christian  supernaturalism  could  be  asserted  ?  Nor  is 
it  any  thing  more  of  a  novelty  than  to  say,  that  "  where 
sin  abounded,  grace  did  much  more  abound."  The 
conception  is  one  that  simply  fulfills  what  Baxter,  Hop- 
kins, and  others,  were  apparently  struggling  after,* 
when  contriving  how  to  let  the  grace  of  God  in  our 
salvation,  match  itself  by  the  hereditary  damage,  or 
depravation,  that  descends  upon  us  from  our  parentage, 
and  the  organic  unity  of  our  nature  as  a  race.  And 
probably  enough  they  were   put   upon   this  mode  of 

*  See  quotations  from  these  writers  in  the  last  Discourse. 


OF    TPIE    CHRISTIAN     STOCK.  207 

tliought,  by  the  familiar  passage  of  Paul  just  re- 
ferred to. 

Christianity  then  has  a  power,  as  we  discover,  to  pre- 
pare a  godly  seed.  It  not  only  takes  hold  of  the  world 
by  its  converting  efficacy,  but  it  has  a  silent  force 
that  is  much  stronger  and  more  reliable  ;  it  moves,  by 
a  kind  of  destiny,  in  causes  back  of  all  the  eccentric 
and  casual  operations  of  mere  individual  choice,  pre- 
paring, by  a  gradual  growing  in  of  grace,  to  become 
the  great  populating  motherhood  of  the  world.  In  this 
conviction,  we  shall  be  strengthened — ■ 

5.  By  the  well  known  fact,  that  the  populating 
power  of  any  race,  or  stock,  is  increased  according  to 
the  degree  of  personal  and  religious  character  to  whicb 
it  has  attained.  Good  principles  and  habits,  intellectual 
culture,  domestic  virtue,  industry,  order,  law,  faith — 
all  these  go  immediately  tQ  enhance  the  rate  and  ca- 
pacity of  population.  They  make  a  race  powerful,  not 
in  tlie*mere  military  sense,  but  in  one  that,  by  century- 
long  reaches  of  populating  force,  lives  down  silently 
every  mere  martial  competitor.  Any  people  that  is 
physiologically  advanced  in  culture,  though  it  be  only 
in  a  degree,  beyond  another  which  is  mingled  with  it 
on  strictly  equal  terms,  is  sure  to  live  down  and  finally 
live  out  its  inferior.  Nothing  can  save  the  inferior 
race  but  a  ready  and  pliant  assimilation. 

The  promise  to  Abraham  depended,  doubtless,  on 
this  fact  for  its  fulfillment.  God  was  to  make  his 
family  fruitful,  above  others,  by  imparting  Himself  to 
it,    and   so  infusing   a  higher  tone   of  personal  life. 


208  THE    OUT-POPULATING     POWER 

Hence  also  the  grand  religious  fact  that  this  race  un- 
folded a  populating  power  so  remarkable.  Going 
down  into  Egypt,  as  a  starving  family,  it  begins  to  be 
evident  in  about  four  hundred  years,  that  they  are  over- 
populating  the  great  kingdom  of  Egypt  itself  "  The 
children  of  Israel  were  fruitful  and  increased  abund- 
antly, and  multiplied  and  waxed  exceeding  mighty, 
and  the  land  was  filled  with  them."  Till  finally  the 
jealousy  of  the  throne  was  awakened,  and  the  king 
began  to  say — "  Behold  the  people  of  the  children  of 
Israel  are  more  and  mightier  than  we  !" 

Afterwards  little  Palestine  itself  was  like  a  swarm  of 
bees;  building  great  cities,  raising  great  armies,  and 
displaying  all  the  tokens,  age  upon  age,  of  a  great  and 
populous  empire.  So  great  was  the  fruitfulness  of  the 
stock,  compared  with  other  nations  of  the  time,  owing 
to  the  higher  personality  unfolded  in  them,  by  their 
only  partial  and  very  crude  training,  in  a  monotheistic 
religion. 

And  again,  at  a  still  later  time,  when  the  nation  itself 
is  dismembered,  and  thousands  of  the  people  are  driven 
off  into  captivity,  we  find  that  when  the  great  king  of 
Persia  had  given  out  an  edict  of  extermination  against 
them,  and  would  like  to  recall  it  but  can  not,  because 
of  the  absurd  maxim  that  what  the  king  has  decreed 
must  not  be  changed,  he  has  only  to  publish  another 
decree,  that  they  shall  have  it  as  their  right  to  stand  for 
their  lives,  and  that  is  enough  to  insure  their  complete 
immunity.  ' '  They  gathered  themselves  together  in  their 
cities,  and  throughout  all  the  provinces,  and  no  man 


OF    THE    CHRISTIAN    STOCK.  209 

could  withstand  them,  for  the  fear  of  them  fell  upon  all 
people."  In  which  we  may  see  how  this  captive  race 
had  multiplied  and  spread  themselves,  in  this  incredi- 
bly short  time,  through  all  the  great  kingdom  of  the 
Medo-Persian  kings. 

Or  we  may  take  a  more  modern  illustration,  drawn 
from  the  comparative  history  of  the  Christian  and  Mo- 
hammedan races.  The  Christian  development  begins 
at  an  older  date,  and  the  Mohammedan  at  a  later.  One 
is  a  propagation  by  moral  and  religious  influences,  at 
least  in  part ;  the  other  a  propagation  by  military  force. 
Both  have  religious  ideas  and  aims,  but  the  main  dis- 
tinction is  that  one  is  taken  hold  of  by  religion  as  be- 
ing a  contribution  to  the  free  personal  nature  of  souls ; 
and  the  other  is  taken  hold  of  by  a  religion  whose  grip 
is  the  strong  grip  of  fate.  For  a  time,  this  latter  spread 
like  a  fire  in  the  forest,  propagated  by  the  terrible  sword 
of  predestination,  and  it  even  seemed  about  to  override 
the  world.  But  it  by-and-bye  began  to  appear,  that 
one  religion  was  creating  and  the  other  uncreating 
manhood ;  one  toning  up  a  great  and  powerful  charac- 
ter, and  the  other  toning  down,  steeping  in  lethargy, 
the  races  it  began  to  inspire;  till  finally  we  can  now 
see  as  distinctly  as  possible,  that  one  is  pouring  on  great 
tides  of  population,  creating  a  great  civilization,  and 
great  and  powerful  nations ;  the  other,  falling  away  into 
a  feeble,  half-depopulated,  always  decaying  state,  that 
augurs  final  extinction  at  no  distant  period.  Kow  the 
fact  is  that  these  two  great  religions  of  the  world  had 
each,  in  itself,  its  own  law  of  population  from  the  be- 


210  THE     OUT-POPULATING    POWER 

ginning,  and  it  was  absolutely  certain,  whether  it  could 
be  seen  or  not,  that  Christianity  would  finally  live 
down  Mohammedanism,  and  completely  expurgate  the 
world  of  it.  The  campaigning  centuries  of  European 
chivalry,  pressing  it  with  crusade  after  crusade,  could 
not  bring  it  under ;  but  the  majestic  populating  force 
of  Christian  faith  and  nurture  can  even  push  it  out  of 
the  world,  as  in  the  silence  of  a  dew-fall. 

What  a  lesson  also  could  be  derived,  in  the  same 
manner,  from  a  comparison  of  the  populating  forces 
of  the  Puritan  stock  in  this  country,  and  of  the  inferior, 
superstitions,  half  Christian  stock  and  nurture  of  the 
South  American  states.  And  the  reason  of  the  differ- 
ence is  that  Christianity,  having  a  larger,  fuller,  more 
new-creating  force  in  one,  gives  it  a  populating  force  as 
much  superior. 

How  this  advantage  accrues,  and  is,  at  some  future 
time,  to  be  more  impressively  revealed  than  now,  it  is 
not  difficult  to  see.  Let  the  children  of  Christian 
parents  grow  np,  all,  as  partakers  in  their  grace,  which 
is  the  true  Christian  idea,  and  the  law  of  family  in- 
crease they  are  in,  is,  by  the  supposition,  so  far  brought 
into  the  church,  and  made  operative  there.  And  then 
comes  in  also  the  additional  fact,  that  there  are  causes 
and  conditions  of  increase  now  operative  in  the  church 
which  exist  nowhere  else. 

Here,  for  example,  there  will  be  a  stronger  tide  of 
health  than  elsewhere.  In  the  world  without,  multi- 
tudes are  perishing  continually  by  vice  and  extrava- 
gance, and,  when  they  do  not  perish  themselves,  they 


OF    THE    CHRISTIAN    STOCK.  211 

are  always  entailing  the  effects  of  their  profligacy  on  the 
half-endowed  constitution  of  their  children.  Meantime, 
in  the  truly  Christian  life,  there  is  a  good  keeping  of 
temperance,  a  steady  sway  of  the  passions,  a  robust 
equability  and  courage,  and  the  whole  domain  of  the  soul 
is  kept  more  closely  to  God's  order;  which  again  is  the 
way  of  health,  and  implies  a  higher  law  of  increase. 

"Wealth,  again,  will  be  unfolded  more  rapidly  under 
the  condition  of  Christian  living  than  elsewhere;  and 
wealth  enough  to  yield  a  generous  supply  of  the  com- 
mon wants  of  life,  is  another  cause  that  favors  popula- 
tion. True  piety  is  itself  a  principle  of  industry  and 
application  to  business.  It  subordinates  the  love  of 
show  and  all  the  tendencies  to  extravagance.  It  rules 
those  licentious  passions  that  war  with  order  and  econ- 
omy. It  generates  a  faithful  character,  which  is  the  basis 
of  credit,  as  credit,  of  prosperity.  Hence  it  is  that  upon 
the  rocky,  stubborn  soil,  under  the  harsh  and  frowning 
skies  of  our  Kew  England,  w^e  behold  so  much  of  high 
prosperity,  so  much  of  physical  well-being,  and  orna- 
ment. And  the  wealth  created  is  diffused  about  as 
evenly  as  the  piety.  A  true  Christian  society  has 
mines  opened,  thus,  in  its  own  habits  and  principles. 
And  the  wealth  accruing  is  power  in  every  direction, 
power  in  production,  enterprise,  education,  colonization, 
influence,  and  consequent  popular  increase. 

There  will  also  be  more  talent  unfolded  in  a  Christian 
people,  and  talent  also  takes  the  helm  of  causes  every 
where.  Christian  piety  is  itself  a  kind  of  holy  devel- 
opment,  enlarging  every  way  the  soul's  dimensions. 


212  THE     OUT-POPULATING    POWER 

It  will  also  be  found  that  Christian  families  abound 
with  influences,  specially  favorable  to  the  awakening  of 
the  intellectual  principle  in  childhood.     Keligion  itself 
is  thoughtful.     It  carries  the  child's  mind  over  directly 
to  unknown  worlds,  fills  the  understanding  with  the 
sublimest  questions,  and  sends  the  imagination  abroad 
to  occupy  itself  where  angels'  wings  would  tire.     The 
child  of  a  Christian  family  is  thus  unsensed,  at  the  ear- 
liest moment,  and  put  into  mental  action ;  this,  too,  un- 
der the  healthy  and  genial  influence  of  Christian  prin- 
ciple.    Every  believing  soul,  too,  is  exalted  and  empow- 
ered by  union  to  God.     His  judgment  is  clarified,  his 
reason  put  in  harmony  with  truth,  his  emotions  swelled 
in  volume,  his  imagination  fired  by  the  object  of  his 
faith.     The  church,  in  short,  is  God's  university,  and  it 
lies  in  her  foundation  as  a  school  of  spiritual  life,  to 
energize  all  capacity,  and  make  her  sons  a  talented  and 
powerful  race. 

Here,  too,  are  the  great  truths,  and  all  the  grandest, 
most  fruitful  ideas  of  existence.  Here  will  spring  up 
science,  discovery,  invention.  The  great  books  will  be 
born  here,  and  the  highest,  noblest,  most  quickening 
character  will  here  be  fashioned.  Popular  liberties  and 
the  rights  of  persons  will  here  be  asserted.  Commerce 
will  go  forth  hence,  to  act  the  preluding  of  the  Christian 
love,  in  the  universal  fellowship  of  trade. 

And  so  we  see,  by  this  rapid  glance  along  the  inven- 
tories of  Christian  society,  that  all  manner  of  causes  are 
included  in  it,  that  will  go  to  fine  the  organization,  raise 
the  robustness,  swell  the  volume,  multiply  the  means, 


OF    THE    CHRISTIAN    STOCK.  213 

magnify  ttie  power  of  the  Christian  body.  It  stands 
among  the  other  bodies  and  religons,  just  as  any  ad- 
vanced race,  the  Saxon  for  example,  stands  among  the 
feebler,  wilder  races,  like  the  Aborigines  of  our  conti- 
nent ;  having  so  much  power  of  every  kind  that  it  puts 
them  in  shadow,  weakens  them,  lives  them  down,  roll- 
ing its  over-populating  tides  across  them,  and  sweeping 
them  away,  as  by  a  kind  of  doom.  Just  so  there  is,  in 
the  Christian  church,  a  grand  law  of  increase  by  which 
it  is  rolling  out  and  spreading  over  the  world.  "Whether 
the  feebler  and  more  abject  races  are  going  to  be  regen- 
erated and  raised  up,  is  already  very  much  of  a  ques- 
tion. What  if  it  should  be  God's  plan  to  people  the 
world  with  better  and  finer  material?  Certain  it  is, 
whatever  expectations  we  may  indulge,  that  there  is  a 
tremendous  overbearing  surge  of  power  in  the  Christian 
nations,  which,  if  the  others  are  not  speedily  raised  to 
some  vastly  higher  capacity,  will  inevitably  submerge 
and  bury  them  forever.  These  great  populations  of 
Christendom — what  are  they  doing,  but  throwing  out 
their  colonies  on  every  side,  and  populating  themselves, 
if  I  may  so  speak,  into  the  possession  of  all  countries 
and  climes  ?  By  this  doom  of  increase,  the  stone  that 
was  cut  out  without  hands,  shows  itself  to  be  a  very 
peculiar  stone,  viz :  a  growing  stone,  that  is  fast  becom- 
ing a  great  mountain,  and  preparing,  as  the  vision  shows, 
to  fill  the  whole  earth. 

We  are  not,  of  course,  to  suspend  our  efforts  to  con- 
vert the  heathen  nations — we  shall  never  become  a 
thoroughly  regenerate  stock,  save  as  we  are  trained  up 


214  THE    OUT-POPULATING    POWER 

into  such  eminence,  bj  our  works  of  mercy  to  man- 
kind. It  is  for  God  to  say  what  races  are  to  be  finally 
submerged  and  lost,  and  not  for  us.  Meantime,  we  are 
to  gain  over  and  save  as  many  as  possible  by  conver- 
sion, and  so  to  hasten  the  day  of  promise.  And  what 
feebler  and  more  pitiful  conceit  could  we  fall  into,  than 
to  assume  that  we  have  the  grand,  over-populating 
grace  in  our  own  stock,  and  sit  down  thus  to  see  it  ac- 
complish by  mere  propagation,  that  which  of  itself 
supposes  a  glorious  inbred  habit  of  faith,  and  sacrifice, 
and  heavenly  charity.  I  only  say  that,  when  we  set 
ourselves  to  the  great  work* of  converting  the  world, 
we  are  to  see  that  we  do  not  miscondition  the  state  of 
childhood,  and  throw  quite  away  from  us,  meantime, 
all  the  mighty  advantages  that  God  designs  to  give  us, 
in  this  other  manner ;  viz.,  in  the  religious  nurture  and 
growth  of  the  godly  seed. 

Once  more,  it  is  a  consideration  that  will  have  great 
weight  with  all  deeply,  thoughtful  persons,  that  the  vin- 
dication of  God  in  sin,  suffering,  punishment,  and  all 
evil  pertaining  to  the  race,  probably  depends,  to  a  great 
degree,  on  just  the  truth  I  am  here  endeavoring  to  es- 
tablish. How  constantly  is  the  question  raised,  why 
God,  as  an  infinitely  good  and  gracious  Father,  should 
put  on  foot  such  a  scheme  of  existence  as  this ;  one 
that  unites  such  oppressive  disadvantages,  and  is  to  be 
such  a  losing  concern  ?  We  begin  life,  it  is  said,  with 
constitutions  depravated  and  poisoned,  and  come  thus 
into  choice  with  predispositions  that  are  damaged  even 
beforehand.     Idolatry,  darkness,  and  guilt,  overspread 


OF    THE     CHRISTIAN    STOCK.  215 

the  world,  in  this  manner,  from  age  to  age,  and  the  vast 
majorities  of  the  race,  rotting  away  thus  into  death 
under  sin,  are  being  all  the  while  precipitated  into  a 
wretched  eternity,  which  is  their  end ;  for  they  go  hence 
in  a  state  visibly  disqualified  for  the  enjoyment,  either 
of  themselves,  or  of  God.  The  picture  is  a  yery  dark 
one,  though  I  feel  a  decided  confidence  that  every  sin- 
gle part  of  God's  counsel  in  it  can  be  sufiiciently  vindi- 
cated. But  this  is  not  a  matter  in  the  compass  of  my 
present  inquiry,  except  so  far  as  the  general  difiiculty 
is  relieved  by  the  possibility  and  prospect  of  great 
future  advantages  that  are  to  accrue,  in  the  fact  of  a 
grand  over-populating  righteousness,  which  is  finally  to 
change  the  aspect  of  the  whole  question.  We  are  not 
to  assume,  with  many,  that  the  world  is  now  just  upon 
its  close,  but  to  look  upon  it  as  barely  having  opened 
its  first  chapter  of  history.  Its  real  value,  and  what  is 
really  to  come  of  it,  probably  does  not  even  yet  begin 
to  appear.  When  its  propagations  cease  to  be  mere 
propagations  of  evil,  or  of  moral  damage  and  disaster, 
and  become  propagations  of  sanctified  life,  and  ages  of 
life ;  when  the  numbers,  talents,  comforts,  powers  of  the 
immense  godly  populations  are  increased  to  more  than 
a  hundred  fold  what  they  now  are ;  and  when,  at  some 
incomputable  distance  of  time,  whose  rate  of  approach 
is  only  hinted  by  the  geologic  ages  of  the  planet,  they 
look  back  upon  us  as  cotemporaries  almost  of  Adam, 
and  forward  through  ages  of  blessing  just  begun,  be- 
holding so  many  worlds-full  of  regenerated  mind  and 
character,  pouring  in  from  hence  to  over-people,  as  it 


216  THE    OUT-POPULATING    POWER 

"were,  eternity  itself;  tliey  will  certainly  have  a  very 
different  opinion  of  tlie  scheme  of  existence  from  that 
which  we  most  naturally  take  np  now.  Then  it  will 
be  confessed  that  the  nurture  of  the  Lord  has  meaning 
and  force  enough  to  change  the  aspect  of  every  thing 
in  Grod's  plan.  Our  scheme  of  propagated  and  deriva- 
tive life  is  no  longer  a  scheme  of  disadvantage,  but  a 
mode  of  induction  that  gives  to  every  soul  the  noblest, 
safest  beginning  possible.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we 
cling  to  the  present  way  and  state  as  the  measure  of  all 
highest  possibilities,  and  expect  to  go  on  converting 
over,  out  of  heathenism  and  death,  the  sturdy,  grown- 
up aliens  of  depravity,  it  will  be  a  most  difficult — always 
growing  more  and  more  difficult — thing  to  vindicate 
the  ways  of  God  in  what  he  has  put  upon  the  world. 
Shall  we  miss,  and  give  it  to  the  future  ages  to  miss,  a 
a  vindication  of  Grod's  way  so  inspiring  in  itself  and  so 
often  promised  in  his  word  ? 

Having  reached  this  closing  point  or  consummation 
of  the  doctrine  of  nurture,  we  are  able,  I  think,  to  see 
something  of  the  dignity  there  is  in  it.  How  trivial, 
unnatural,  weak,  and,  at  the  same  time,  violent,  in  com- 
parison, is  that  overdone  scheme  of  individualism, 
which  knows  the  race  only  as  mere  units  of  will  and 
personal  action;  dissolves  even  families  into  monads; 
makes  no  account  of  organic  relations  and  uses ;  and 
expects  the  world  to  be  finally  subdued  by  adult  con- 
versions, when  growing  up  still,  as  before,  in  all  the 
younger  tiers  of  life,  toward  a  mere  convertible  state 


OF    THE    CHRISTIAN    STOCK.         ""     217 

of  adult  ungodliness.  Such  a  scheme  gives  a  most  un- 
genial  and  forlorn  aspect  to  the  family.  It  makes  the 
church  a  mere  gathering  in  of  adult  atoms,  to  be  in- 
creased only  by  the  gathering  in  of  other  and  more 
numerous  adult  atoms.  It  very  nearly  makes  the 
scheme  of  existence  itself  an  abortion  ;  finding  no  great 
law  of  propagative  good  and  mercy  in  it,  and  taking 
quite  away  the  possibility  and  prospect  of  that  sublime 
vindication  of  God  which  is  finally  to  be  developed,  and 
by  which  God's  way  in  the  creation  is  to  be  finally 
crowned  with  all  highest  honors  of  counsel  and  benefi- 
cence. Opposite  to  this,  we  have  seen  how  it  is  God's 
plan,  by  ties  of  organic  unity  and  nurture,  to  let  one 
generation  extend  itself  into  and  over  another,  in  the 
order  of  grace,  just  as  it  does  in  the  order  of  nature ; 
to  let  us  expect  the  growing  up  of  children  in  the  Lord, 
even  as  their  parents  are  to  be  parents  in  the  Lord,  and 
are  set  to  bring  them  up  in  the  nurture  of  the  Lord ; 
on  this  ground  of  anticipation,  permitting  us  to  apply 
the  seal  of  our  faith  to  them,  as  being  incipiently  in  the 
quickening  of  our  faith,  even  before  they  have  intelli- 
.  gence  to  act  it,  and  consciously  choose  it ;  so  accepting 
them  to  be  members  of  the  church,  as  being  presump- 
tively in  the  life  of  the  church ;  in  this  manner  incor- 
porating in  the  church  a  great  law  of  grace  and  sancti- 
fying power,  by  which  finally  the  salvation  will  become 
an  inbred  life  and  populating  force,  mighty  enough  to 
overlive,  and  finally  to  completely  people  the  world. 
And  this  is  what  we  call  the  day  of  glory.  It  lies,  to  a 
great  degree,  in  the  scheme  of  Christian  nurture  itself, 


218  THE    OUT-POPULATING    POWER 

and  is  possible  only  as  a  consummation  of  tliat  scheme. 
If  I  rightly  conceive  the  gospel  work  and  plan,  this  is 
the  regeneration  ["TraXi/^ewstfia]  which  our  Lord  prom- 
ises, viz. :  that  he  will  reclaim  and  resanctify  the  great 
principle  of  reproductive  order  and  life,  and  people,  at 
last,  the  world  with  a  godly  seed. 

The  church,  as  being  made  up  of  souls  that  are  born 
of  the  Spirit  is  a  new  supernatural  order  thus  in  hu- 
manity;  a  spiritual  nation,  we  may  conceive,  that  was 
founded  by  a  colony  from  the  skies.  It  alights  upon 
our  globe  as  its  chartered  territory.  Can  it  overspread 
the  whole  planet  and  take  possession  ?  We  see  that  it 
can  unfold  more  of  health,  Y^ealth,  talent,  than  the 
present  living  races  of  inhabitants.  It  has  within  itself 
a  stronger  law  of  population,  as  well  as  a  mighty  power 
to  win  over  and  assimulate  the  nations.  Its  people 
have  more  truth,  beauty,  weight  of  character  to  exalt 
their  predominance.  And,  what  is  more,  God  is  in  them 
by  his  all-informing,  all-energizing  Spirit,  to  be  Him- 
self unfolded  in  their  history,  and  make  it  powerful. 
Not  to  believe  that  the  Heavenly  Colony,  thus  consti- 
tuted and  endowed,  will  finally  overspread  and  fill  the 
world,  is  to  deny  causes,  their  effects,  and  to  quite  in- 
vert the  natural  order  of  strength  and  weakness.  God, 
too,  has  testified  in  regard  to  this  branch  of  his  plant- 
ing— "  They  shall  inherit  the  land." 

It  is  very  obvious  that  this  general  view  of  Christian 
nurture,  and  its  effects  is  one  that,  becoming  really  in- 
stalled in  our  faith,  and  the  aims  of  our  piety,  would 


OF    THE    CHRISTIAN    STOCK.  219 

induce  important  modifications  in  our  Ciiristian  prac- 
tice, and  change,  to  a  considerable  degree,  the  modes 
of  our  religious  demonstration.  Our  over-intense  indi- 
vidualism carries  with  it  an  immense  loss  of  feeling, 
affection,  sentiment,  which  hardens  the  aspect  of  every 
thing,  and  dries  away  the  sweet  charities  and  tender 
affections  that  would  grace  the  older  generations  of 
souls,  when  conceiving  that  the  younger  live  in  them, 
and  are  somehow  folded  in  their  personality.  We  not 
only  lose  our  children  under  this  atomizing  scheme  of 
piety,  which  is  a  loss  we  can  not  afford,  but  a  certain 
misproportion  is  induced,  which  distempers  all  our 
efforts  and  demonstrations. 

One  principal  reason  why  we  are  so  often  deficient  in 
character,  or  outward  beauty,  is,  that  piety  begins  too 
late  in  life,  having  thus  to  maintain .  a  perpetual  and 
unequal  war  with  previous  habit.  If  it  was  not  true 
of  Paul,  it  is  yet  too  generally  true,  that  one  born  out 
of  due  time  will  be  found  out  of  due  time,  more  often 
than  he  should  be  afterwards — unequal,  inconsistent 
with  himself,  acting  the  old  man  instead  of  the  new. 
Having  the  old  habit  to  war  with,  it  is  often  too  strong 
for  him.  To  make  a  graceful  and  complete  Christian 
character,  it  needs  itself  to  be  the  habit  of  existence ; 
not  a  grape  grafted  on  a  bramble.  And  this,  it  will  be 
seen,  requires  a  Christian  childhood  in  the  subject. 
Having  this,  the  gracious  or  supernatural  character  be- 
comes itself  more  nearly  natural,  and  possesses  the  pe- 
culiar charm  of  naturalness,  which  is  necessary  to  the 
highest  moral  beauty. 


220  THE    OUT-POPULATING    POWER 

It  results  also  from  our  mistaken  views  of  Christian 
training,  tliat  we  fall  into  a  notion  of  religion  that  is 
mechanical.  We  thrust  our  children  out  of  the  cove- 
nant first,  and  insist,  in  spite  of  it,  that  they  shall  grow 
up  in  the  same  spiritual  state  as  if  their  father  and 
mother  were  heathens.  Then  we  go  out,  at  least  on 
certain  occasions,  to  convert  them  back,  as  if  they 
actually  were  heathens.  Our  only  idea  of  increase  is  of 
.that  which  accrues  by  means  of  a  certain  abrupt  technical 
experience.  Led  away  thus  from  all  thought  of  inter- 
nal growth  in  the  church,  efforts  to  secure  conversions 
take  an  external  character,  becoming  gospel  campaigns. 
Accretion  displaces  growth.  The  church  is  gathered  as  a 
foundling  hospital ;  and  lest  it  should  not  be  such,  its  own 
children  are  reduced  to  foundlings.  Immediate  repent- 
ance proclaimed,  insisted  on,  and  realized  in  an  abrupt 
change,  proper  only  to  those  who  are  indeed  aliens  and 
enemies,  is  the  only  hope  or  inlet  of  the  church.  We 
can  not  understand  how  the  spiritual  nation  should  grow 
and  populate,  and  become  powerful  within  itself. 

Piety  becomes  inconstant,  and  revivals  of  religion 
take  an  exaggerated  character  from  the  same  causes. 
If  all  Christian  success  is  measured  by  the  count  of 
technical  conversigns  from  without,  then  it  follows  that 
nothing  is  done  when  conversions  cease  to  be  counted. 
The  harvest  closes  not  with  feasting,  but  with  famine. 
Despair  cuts  off  Christian  motive.  The  tide  is  spent ; 
let  us  anchor  during  the  ebb.  It  is  well  indeed  to  live 
very  piously  in  the  families ;  still,  there  is  nothing  de- 
pending on  it.     The   children  will  be   good   subjects 


OF    THE    CHRISTIAN    STOCK.  221 

enough  for  conversion  without.  The  piety  of  the 
church  is  thus  made  to  be  desultory  and  irregular  by 
system.  The  idea  of  conquest  displaces  the  idea  of 
growth.  Whereas,  if  it  were  understood  that  Christian 
education  or  training  in  the  families,  is  to  be  itself  a 
process  of  domestic  conversion  ;  that  as  a  child  weeps 
under  a  frown  and  smiles  at  the  command  of  a  smile, 
so  spiritual  influences  may  be  streaming  into  his  being 
from  the  handling  of  the  nursery  and  the  whole  man- 
ner and  temperament  of  the  house,  producing  what  will 
ever  after  be  fundamental  impressions  of  his  being ; 
then  the  hearth,  the  table,  the  society  and  affections  of 
the  house,  would  all  feel  the  presence  of  a  practical 
religious  motive.  The  homes  would  be  Christian,  the 
families  abodes  of  piety. 

Here  too  is  the  greatest  impediment  to  a  true  mis- 
sionary spirit.  The  habit  of  conquest  runs  to  dissipa- 
tion and  irregularity.  It  is  as  if  a  nation,  forgetting  its 
own  internal  resources,  were  scouring  the  seas,  and 
trooping  up  and  down  the  world,  in  pursuit  of  prize- 
money  and  plunder,  forsaking  the  loom  and  the  plow, 
and  all  the  regular  growths  of  industry.  Whereas,  if 
the  church  were  unfolding  the  riches  of  the  covenant 
at  her  firesides  and  tables ;  if  the  children  were  identi- 
fied with  religion  from  the  first,  and  grew  up  in  a 
Christian  love  of  man,  the  missionary  spirit  would  not 
throw  itself  up  in  irregular  jets,  but  would  flow  as  a  river. 

We  suffer  also  greatly  and  even  produce  a  somewhat 
painful  evidence  of  mistake,  in  our  endeavor  to  be 
always  operating  by  an  immediate  influence  of   the 


222  THE    OUT-POPULATING    POWER 

Holy  Spirit,  when  we  make  his  mediate  influence  a 
matter  of  little  account.  For  there  is,  I  apprehend,  a 
certain  fixed  relation  between  those  exertions  of  spir- 
itual influence  which  are  immediate,  and  those  which 
flow  mediately  from  the  church  ;  else  why  has  not  the 
Spirit  left  the  church  behind,  and  poured  itself,  as  a 
rushing,  mighty  wind,  into  the  bosom  of  the  whole 
world  in  a  day  ?  There  needed  to  be  an  objective  in- 
fluence, as  well  as  one  internal ;  else  the  subject  of  the 
Spirit  would  not  know  or  guess  to  what  his  internal 
motions  are  attributable,  and  might  deem  them  only 
nervous  or  hysteric  effects ;  or  possibly,  if  a  heathen,  the 
work  of  some  enchanter  or  demon.  When  the  church, 
therefore,  grows  and  manifests  the  work  of  God  by  the 
beauty  of  her  life,  and  the  heavenly  energy  of  her 
spirit,  when  the  sanctification  she  speaks  of  visibly 
strikes  through — through  the  body,  through  the  man- 
ners and  works,  into  the  family  state,  into  the  commu- 
nity— that  is  the  mediate  influence  necessary  to  another 
which  is  immediate.  Looking  on  her  demonstrations, 
the  observer  is  not  only  impressed  and  drawn  by  the 
assimilating  power  of  her  character,  but  he  distin- 
guishes in  her  the  type  and  form  of  that  into  which 
he  is  himself  to  be  wrought,  and  so  he  is  ready  for  the 
intelligent  reception  of  the  Spirit  in  himself  If  now 
there  is  this  fixed  relation  between  God's  mediate  and 
immediate  agency  in  souls,  how  great  is  the  mistake, 
when  we  virtually  assume,  in  our  efforts  and  expecta- 
tions, that  he  will  come  upon  souls,  only  as  the  light- 
ning is  bolted  from   the   sky.      How   desultory   and 


OF    THE    CHRISTIAN    STOCK.  223 

irruptive  is  the  grace  hie  ministers,  how  little  respective 
of  the  work  he  has  already  begun  in  others,  whom  he 
might  employ  to  be  the  medium  of  his  power !  On 
the  other  hand,  if  we  are  right  in  this  view — if  there  is 
a  fixed  relation  between  the  mediate  and  immediate 
influences  of  the  Spirit — such  that  one  measures  the 
other,  (and  we  could  urge  many  additional  reasons  for 
the  opinion,)  then  are  we  brought  fairly  out  upon  the 
sublime  conclusion,  that  the  growth  or  progress  of 
Christian  piety  in  the  church,  if  it  shall  take  place, 
offers  the  expectation  of  a  correspondent  progress  in 
the  development  of  those  spiritual  influences  that  are 
immediate.  The  mediate  and  immediate  are  both  iden- 
tical at  the  root.  If  therefore  the  church  unfolds  her 
piety  as  a  divine  life,  which  is  one,  the  divine  life  will 
display  its  activity  as  much  more  potently  and  victo- 
riously without,  which  is  the  other.  And  as  the  king- 
dom of  heaven,  which  was  at  first  as  a  grain  of  mustard 
seed,  advances  in  the  last  days  toward  the  stature  of 
a  tree,  the  more  it  may  advance ;  for  the  Holy  Spirit 
will  pour  himself  into  the  world,  as  much  more 
freely  and  powerfully.  Grant,  0  God!  that  we  may 
not  disappoint  ourselves  of  a  hope  so  glorious,  by  at- 
tempts to  extend  thy  church  without  that  holy  growth 
of  piety,  on  which  our  success  depends !  Pour  thyself, 
in  thy  fullness  and  as  a  gale  of  purity,  into  our  bosom ! 
Expel  all  schemes  that  are  not  begun  in  Thee !  Let 
there  be  good  desires  in  us,  that  our  works  may  be 
good  !  And  that  Thou  mayest  do  thy  will  in  the  earth, 
do  it  in  us  perfectly  ! 


PART  II  -THE  MODE, 


I, 


WHEN  AND  WHERE  THE  NURTURE  BEGINS. 

"  When  I  call  to  remembrance  the  unfeigned  faith  that  is  in  thee,  which 
dwelt  first  in  thy  grandmother  Lois,  and  thy  mother  Eunice,  and  I  am 
persuaded  that  in  thee  also." — 2  Timothy^  i.  5. 

This  faith  of  Timotliy,  whicli  is  but  another  name 
for  the  grace  of  life  in  his  character,  the  apostle  speaks 
of  here,  it  will  be  seen,  as  a  kind  of  personal  heredita- 
ment, or  heir-loom  in  the  family.  He  does  not  mean  to 
say,  as  I  understand  him,  that  it  is  literally  such,  or  in 
what  sense,  and  how  far,  it  is  such.  He  only  recog- 
nizes a  godly  parentage,  doing  godly  things  in  him  and 
for  him,  for  one,  two,  three,  or  he  knows  not  how  many, 
generations  back.  He  regards  his  young  friend  as  born 
of  godliness,  nurtured  and  trained  by  godliness,  and 
indulges  a  certain  pleasant  conviction  that  his  present, 
full  developed  faith  in  Jesus,  was  a  seed  somehow 
planted  in  him  by  the  believiDg  motherhoods  of  the 
past,  and  began  to  live  and  grow  in  him,  thus,  long  be- 
fore he  knew  it  himself,  or  others  observed  it  in  him. 
So  by  a  short  method,  which  includes  and  covers  all,  the 
apostle  cajls  it  his  heir-loom  ;  complimenting  his  godly 
motherhood  in  the  figure,  and  testifying  the  greater 
confidence  in  his  piety,  that  it  was  so  near  to  being  the 
inborn  nobility  of  his  Christian  stock. 


228  WHEN    AND    WHERE 

I  use  the  text,  accordingly,  not  to  draw  some  definite 
conclusion  or  truth,  from  the  evidently  well  understood 
indefiniteness  of  the  terms  of  it,  but  simply  to  head  a 
discussion  of  the  question,  when  and  where^  at  what  pointy 
and  how  early ^  does  the  office  of  a  genuine  nurture  begin  ? 

Having  settled  our  conceptions  of  the  scheme,  or  doc- 
trinal import,  of  Christian  nurture,  finding  what  place 
it  has,  and  is  to  have,  in  the  Christian  plan,  we  are 
come  now  to  a  matter  farther  in  advance,  and,  in  one 
view,  more  practical,  viz:  to  a  consideration  of  the 
modes  and  means,  by  which  the  true  idea  of  a  godly 
nurture  may  be  realized  in  the  training  of  families. 
And  here  it  becomes  our  first  endeavor  to  rectify,  or  ex- 
pel a  whole  set  of  false  impressions,  that  have  grown 
up  round  the  gate  of  responsibility  itself,  turning  off, 
and  pushing  aside  all  due  concern,  till  the  time  of 
greatest  facility  and  advantage  is  quite  gone  by.  The 
very  common  impression  is  that  nothing  is  to  be  done 
for  the  religious  character  of  children,  till  they  are  old 
enough,  to  form  religious  judgments,  put  forth  religious 
choices,  take  the  meaning  of  the  Christian  truths,  and 
perceive  what  is  in  them  as  related  to  the  wants  of 
sin,  consciously  felt  and  reflected  on.  There  could  not 
be  a  more  sad  or,  in  fact,  more  desolating  mistake,  in 
any  matter,  either  of  duty  or  of  privilege.  And  it  is 
the  more  wonderful,  the  closer  in  appearance  to  real  fa- 
tuity, that  it  holds  its  ground  so  firmly,  where  all  the 
tenderest  pressures  of  affection  might  be  expected  to 
force  it  aside,  and  clear  the  field  of  its  really  cruel 
usurpations. 


THE    NURTURE    BEGINS.  229 

In  discussing  tlie  question  proposed,  1  should  not 
properly  cover  ttie  whole  ground  of  it,  and  could  not 
really  be  said  to  answer  it,  if  I  did  not — 

1.  Bring  into  view  tlie  very  important,  but  rather 
delicate  fact,  suggested  or  distinctly  alluded  to  in  the 
apostle's  words,  that  there  is  even  a  kind  of  ante-natal 
nurture  which  must  be  taken  note  of,  as  having  much 
to  do  with  the  religious  preparations  or  inductive  mer- 
cies of  childhood.  We  are  physiologically  connected 
and  set  forth  in  our  beginnings,  and  it  is  a  matter  of 
immense  consequence  to  our  character,  what  the  connec- 
tion is.  In  our  birth,  we  not  only  begin  to  breathe  and 
circulate  blood,  but  it  is  a  question  hugely  significant 
whose  the  blood  may  be.  For  in  this  we  have  whole 
rivers  of  predispositions,  good  or  bad,  set  running  in 
us — as  much  more  powerful  to  shape  our  future  than  all . 
tuitional  and  regulative  influences  that  come  after,  as 
they  are  earlier  in  their  beginning,  deeper  in  their  inser- 
tion, and  more  constant  in  their  operation.  It  is  a  great 
mistake  to  suppose  that  men  and  women,  such  as  are  to 
be  fathers  and  mothers,  are  affected  only  in  their  souls 
by  religious  experience,  and  not  in  their  bodies.  On 
mere  physiological  principles  it  can  not  be  true,  for  the 
mind  must  temper  the  body  to  its  own  states  and 
changes.  Living,  therefore,  in  the  peace  and  purity, 
holding  the  equilibrium,  flowing  in  the  liberty,  reigning 
in  the  confidence,  of  a  genuine  sanctification,  the  sub- 
jects of  such  grace  are  penetrated  bodily,  all  through, 
by  the  work  of  the  Spirit  in  their  life.  Their  appetites 
are  more  nearly,  in  heaven's  order,  their  passions  more 


230  WHEN    AND    WHERE 

tempered  by  reason,  their  irritabilities  more  sweetened 
and  calmed,  and  so  far  they  are  entered  bodily  into  the 
condition  of  health.  "Where  the  constitution  was  poi- 
soned originally  by  descent,  or  has  since  been  broken 
down  by  excess  and  abuse,  it  may  not  be  wholly  re- 
stored in  this  life.  I  do  not  suppose  that  it  will ;  but 
since  the  soul  is  acting  itself  always  into  and  through 
the  body,  when  it  becomes  a  temple  of  the  Spirit,  the 
body  also  must  be,  just  as  the  Scriptures  explicitly 
teach ;  undergoing,  with  the  soul,  a  remedial  process  in 
its  tempers  and  humors,  and  prospering  in  heaven's  or- 
der, even  as  the  soul  prospereth.  This  being  true,  it  is 
impossible,  on  mere  physiological  principles,  that  the 
children  of  a  truly  sanctified  parentage  should  not  be 
advantaged  by  the  grace  out  of  which  they  are  born. 
And,  if  the  godly  character  has  been  kept  up  in  a  long 
line  of  ancestry,  corrupted  by  no  vicious  or  untoward 
intermarriages,  the  advantage  must  be  still  greater  and 
more  positive.  Even  temporary  changes  in  the  Chris- 
tian state  of  character  and  attainment,  will  have  their 
effect ;  how  much  more  the  godly  keeping  of  a  thor- 
oughly and  evenly  sanctified  life;  how  much  more 
such  a  keeping  of  inbred  grace  and  faith,  in  a  long  line 
of  godly  ancestors. 

I  might  even  state  the  case  more  strongly,  bringing 
into  the  comparison  a  godly  and  a  vicious  parentage. 
Take  a  parentage  that  has  in  it  all  the  dyspeptic  woes 
of  gluttony  and  self-indulgence,  one  that  is  stung  and 
maddened  by  the  fiery  pains  of  intemperance,  one  that 
is  poisoned  and  imbruted  by  the  excesses  of  lust,  one 


THE    NURTURE    BEGINS.  231 

that  is  broken  by  domestic  wrongs  or  exasperated  by 
domestic  quarrels,  one  that  is  fevered  by  ambitions,  one 
that  is  soured  by  the  morbid  humors  of  envy  and  de- 
feat— lengthen  out  the  catalogue,  take  in  all  the  sins, 
which,  in  some  true  sense,  are  also  vices  and  have  their 
effect  on  the  body,  how  is  it  possible,  on  any  principle 
of  rational  physiology,  that  the  children  who  are  sprung 
of  this  distempered  heritage,  should  be  as  pure  in  their 
af&nities,  as  close  to  the  order  of  truth,  as  ready  for  the 
occupany  of  all  good  thoughts,  as  well  governed  before 
all  government,  as  ductile  in  a  word  to  God,  as  they 
that  are  born  of  a  glorious  lineage  in  faith  and  prayer 
and  God's  indwelling  peace.  Nothing  could  be  more 
improbable  antecedently,  or  farther  off  from  the  actual 
fact  afterward.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  a  most  dismal  and 
hard  lot,  as  every  one  knows,  to  be  in  the  succession  of 
a  bad,  or  vicious  parentage.  No  heritage  of  wealth 
could  repay,  or  more  than  a  little  soften  the  bitterness 
of  it. 

It  is  somewhat  dif&cult  to  investigate  the  facts  of  this 
subject,  because  of  the  complexities  induced  by  unpro- 
pitious  and  exceptional  marriages.  But  when  such 
marriages  are  reduced  by  the  more  general,  and  finally 
universal,  spread  of  Christian  piety,  and  when  the  pitch 
of  Christian  sanctification  is  raised,  as  it  will  be,  by  the 
fuller  inspiration  from  God,  breaking  into  his  saints  all 
over  the  world,  it  will  be  found  that  children  are  born 
as  much  closer  to  God,  and  with  predispositions  that~ 
waft  them  as  much  more  certainly  into  the  ways  of  duty 
and  piety.     It  will  be  as  if  the  faith-power  of  the  past 


232  WHEN    AND  WHERE 

were  descending  into  the  present,  flowing  on  down  tlie 
future,  and  the  general  account  of  the  world  will  be, 
that,  as  it  has  been  corrupted,  so  also  it  is  in  some 
equally  true  sense,  regenerated  from  the  womb.  Pre- 
cisely that  which  is  named  in  Scripture,  as  the  fact  ex- 
traordinary, will  become  at  last  the  ordinary  and  even 
the  universal  fact. 

Here,  then,  is  the  real  and  true  beginning  of  a  godly 
nurture.  The  child  is  not  to  have  the  sad  entail  of  any 
sensuality,  or  excess,  or  distempered  passion  upon  him. 
The  heritage  of  love,  peace,  order,  continence  and  holy 
courage  is  to  be  his.  He  is  not  to  be  morally  weakened 
beforehand,  in  the  womb  of  folly,  by  the  frivolous, 
worldly,  ambitious,  expectations  of  parents-to-be,  con- 
centrating all  their  nonsense  in  him.  His  af&nities  are 
to  be  raised  by  the  godly  expectations,  rather,  and 
prayers  that  go  before ;  by  the  steady  and  good  aims  of 
their  industry,  by  the  great  impulse  of  their  faith,  by 
the  brightness  of  their  hope,  by  the  sweet  continence 
of  their  religiously  pure  love  in  Christ.  Born,  thus,  of 
a  parentage  that  is  ordered  in  all  righteousness,  and 
maintains  the  right  use  of  every  thing,  especially  the 
right  use  of  nature  and  marriage,  the  child  will  have 
just  so  much  of  heaven's  life  and  order  in  him  before- 
hand, as  have  become  fixed  properties  in  the  type  of  his 
parentage ;  and  by  this  ante-natal  nurture,  will  be  set 
ofiP  in  a  way  of  noblest  advantage,  as  respects  all  safety 
and  success,  in  the  grand  experiment  he  has  come  into 
the  world  to  make. 

Having  called  your  attention  to  this  very  important 


THE    NURTURE    BEGINS.  233 

but  strangely  disregarded  cliapter,  in  the  economy  of 
Christian  nurture,  I  leave  it  to  be  more  fully  and  circum- 
stantially developed  by  your  own  thoughtful  considera- 
tion ;  for  it  is  a  matter  which  will  open  itself  readily, 
and  prove  itself  by  striking  and  continually  recurring 
facts  to  such  as  have  it  in  their  hearts  to  watch  for  the 
truth  and  the  duties  it  requires.     We  pass  now — 

2.  To  that  which  is  the  common  field  of  inquiry,  and 
here  we  raise  again  the  question,  where  and  how  early 
does  the  work  of  nurture  begin  ?  here  to  set  forth  and 
maintain  still  another  answer,  which  antedates  the  com- 
mon impression,  about  as  decidedly  as  the  one  just 
given.  The  true,  and  only  true  answer  is,  that  the 
nurture  of  the  soul  and  character  is  to  begin  just  when 
the  nurture  of  the  body  begins.  It  is  first  to  be  infan- 
tile nurture — as  such,  Christian;  then  to  be  a  child's 
nurture;  then  to  be  a  youth's  nurture — advancing 
by  imperceptible  gradations,  if  possible,  according  to 
the  gradations  and  stages  of  the  growth,  or  progress 
toward  maturity. 

There  is,  of  course,  no  absolute  classification  to  be 
made  here,  because  there  are  no  absolute  lines  of  dis- 
tinction. A  kind  of  proximate  and  partly  ideal  dis- 
tinction may  be  made,  and  I  make  it  simply  to  serve  the 
convenience  of  my  subject — otherwise  impossible  to  be 
handled,  so  as  to  secure  any  right  practical  conviction 
respecting  it.  It  is  the  distinction  between  the  age  of 
impressions  and  the  age  of  tuitional  influences;  or  be- 
tween the  age  of  existence  in  the  will  of  the  parent^  and 
the  age  of  ivill  and  personal  choice  in  the  child.     If  the 


234  WHEN    AND    WHERE 

distinction  were  laid,  between  the  age  previous  to  lan- 
guage and  tlie  age  of  language,  it  would  amount  to 
nearly  the  same  thing;  for  the  time  of  personal  and 
responsible  choice  depends  on  the  measure  of  intelli- 
gence attained  to,  and  the  measure  of  intelligence 
is  well  represented,  outwardly,  by  the  degree  of  de- 
velopment in  language.  Of  course  it  will  be  under- 
stood that  we  speak,  in  this  distinction,  of  that  which 
is  not  sharply  defined,  and  is  passed  at  no  precise  date 
or  age.  The  transition  is  gradual,  and  it  w^ill  even  be 
doubtful,  when  it  is  passed.  ISTo  one  can  say  just  where 
a  given  child  passes  out  of  the  field  of  mere  impression 
into  the  field  of  responsible  action.  It  will  be  doubtful, 
in  about  the  same  degree,  when  it  can  be  said  to  have 
come  into  the  power  of  language.  We  do  not  even 
know  that  there  is  not  some  infinitesimal  development 
of  will  in  the  child's  first  cry,  and  some  instinct  of  lan- 
guage struggling  in  that  cry.  Our  object  in  the  dis- 
tinction is  not  to  assume  any  thing  in  respect  to  such 
matters,  but  simply  to  accommodate  our  own  ignorance, 
by  raising  a  distribution  that  enables  us  to  speak  of 
times  and  characteristics  truly  enough  to  serve  the  con- 
ditions of  general  accurary,  and  to  assist,  in  that  man- 
ner, the  purposes  of  our  discussion. 

ISTow  the  very  common  assumption  is  that,  in  what 
we  have  called  the  age  of  impressions,  there  is  really 
nothing  done,  or  to  be  done,  for  the  religious  character. 
The  lack  of  all  genuine  apprehensions,  in  respect  to  this 
matter,  among  people  otherwise  intelligent  and  awake, 
is  really  wonderful;    it   amounts  even   to  a  kind  of 


THE    NUETURE    BEGINS.  235 

coarseness.  Full  of  all  fondness,  and  all  highest  expect- 
ation respecting  their  children,  and  having  also  many 
Christian  desires  for  their  welfare,  they  seem  never  to 
have  brought  their  minds  down  close  enough  to  the 
soul  of  infancy,  to  imagine  that  any  thing  of  conse- 
quence is  going  on  with  it.  What  can  they  do,  till 
they  can  speak  to  it  ?  what  can  it  do,  till  it  speaks  ?  As 
if  there  were  no  process  going  on  to  bring  it  forward 
into  language ;  or  as  if  that  process  had  itself  nothing 
to  do  with  the  bringing  on  of  intelligence,  and  no  deep, 
seminal  working  toward  a  character,  unfolding  and  to 
be  unfolded  in  it.  The  child,  in  other  words,  is  to 
come  into  intelligence  through  perfect  unintelligence ! 
to  get  the  power  of  words  out  of  words  themselves, 
and  without  any  experience  whereby  their  meaning 
is  developed !  to  be  taught  responsibility  under  moral 
and  religious  ideas,  when  the  experience  has  unfolded 
no  such  ideas !  In  this  first  stage,  therefore,  which 
I  have  called  the  stage  of  impressions,  how  very 
commonly  will  it  be  found  that  the  parents,  even 
Christian  parents,  discharge  themselves,  in  the  most  in- 
nocently unthinking  way  possible,  of  so  much  as  a  con- 
ception of  responsibility.  The  child  can  not  talk,  what 
then  can  it  know?  So  they  dress  it  in  all  fineries, 
practice  it  in  shows  and  swells  and  all  the  petty  airs 
of  foppery  and  brave  assumption,  act  it  into  looks 
and  manners  not  fit  to  be  acted  any  where,  provoking 
the  repetition  of  its  bad  tricks  by  laughing  at  them, 
indulging  freely  every  sort  of  temper  towards  it,  or,  it 
may  be,  filling  the  house  with  a  din  of  scolding  between 


236  WHEN  AND  Where 

the  parents^all  this  in  simple  security,  as  if  their  child 
were  only  a  thing,  or  an  ape !  What  hurt  can  the  sim- 
ple creature  get  from  any  thing  done  before  it,  toward 
it,  or  upon  it,  when  it  can  talk  of  nothing,  and  will  not 
so  much  as  remember  any  thing  it  has  seen  or  heard  ? 
Doubtless  there  is  a  wise  care  to  be  had  of  it,  when  it 
is  old  enough  to  be  taught  and  commanded,  but  till 
then  there  is  nothing  to  be  done,  but  simply  to  foster 
the  plaything  kindly,  enjoy  it  freely,  or  abuse  it  pet- 
tishly, at  pleasure ! 

Just  contrary  to  this,  I  suspect,  and  I  think  it  can 
also  be  shown  by  sufficient  evidence,  that  more  is  done 
to  affect,  or  fix  the  moral  and  religious  character  of 
children,  before  the  age  of  language  than  after;  that  the 
age  of  impressions,  when  parents  are  commonly  wait- 
ing, in  idle  security,  or  trifling  away  their  time  in  mis- 
chievous indiscretions,  or  giving  up  their  children  to 
the  chance  of  such  keeping  as  nurses  and  attendants 
may  exercise,  is  in  fact  their  golden  opportunity ;  when 
more  is  likely  to  be  done  for  their  advantage  or  damage, 
than  in  all  the  instruction  and  discipline  of  their  minor- 
ity afterward. 

And  something  like  this  I  think  we  should  augur 
beforehand,  from  the  peculiar,  full-born  intensity  of  the 
maternal  affection,  at  the  moment  when  it  first  embraces 
the  newly  arrived  object.  It  scarcely  appears  to  grow, 
never  to  grow  tender  and  self-sacrificing  in  its  care.  It 
turns  itself  to  its  charge,  with  a  love  that  is  boundless 
and  fathomless,  at  the  first.  As  if  just  then  and  there, 
some  highest  and  most  sacred   office   of  motherhood 


THE    NUKTURE    BEGINS.  237 

were  required  to  begin.  Is  it  only  mat  the  cliild  de- 
mands her  physical  nurture  and  carefulness  ?  That  is 
not  the  answer  of  her  consciousness.  Her  maternity 
scorns  all  comparison  with  that  of  the  mere  animals. 
Her  love,  as  she  herself  feels,  looks  through  the  body 
into  the  inborn  personality  of  her  child, — the  man  or 
woman  to  be.  Nay,  more  than  that,  if  she  could  sound 
her  consciousness  deeply  enough,  she  would  find  a  cer- 
tain religiousness  in  it,  measurable  by  no  scale  of  mere 
earthly  and  temporal  love.  Here  springs  the  secret  of 
her  maternity,  and  its  semi-divine  proportions.  It  is 
the  call  and  equipment  of  God,  for  a  work  on  the 
impressional  and  plastic  age  of  a  soul.  Christianized 
as  it  should  be,  and  wrought  in  by  the  grace  of  the 
Spirit,  the  minuteness  of  its  care,  its  gentleness,  its 
patience,  its  almost  divine  faithfulness,  are  prepared  for 
the  shaping  of  a  soul's  immortality.  And,  to  make  the 
work  a  sure  one,  the  intrusted  soul  is  allowed  to  have 
no  will  as  yet  of  its  own,  that  this  motherhood  may 
more  certainly  plant  the  angel  in  the  man,  uniting  him 
to  all  heavenly  goodness  by  predispositions  from  itself, 
before  he  is  united,  as  he  will  be,  by  choices  of  his  own. 
Nothing  but  this  explains  and  measures  the  wonderful 
proportions  of  maternity. 

It  will  be  seen  at  once,  and  will  readily  be  taken*  as 
a  confirmation  of  the  transcendent  importance  of  what 
is  done,  or  possible  to  be  done,  for  children,  in  their 
impressional  and  plastic  age,  that  whatever  is  impressed 
or  inserted  here,  at  this  early  point,  must  be  profoundly 
seminal,  as  regards  all  the  future  developments  of  the 


238  WHEN    AND    WHl^RE 

character.  And  though  it  can  not,  by  the  supposition, 
amount  to  character,  in  the  responsible  sense  of  that 
term,  it  may  be  the  seed,  in  some  very  important  sense, 
of  all  the  fnture  character  to  be  unfolded;  just  as  we 
familiarly  think  of  sin  itself,  as  a  character  in  blame 
when  the  will  is  ripe,  though  prepared,  in  still  another 
view,  by  the  seminal  damages  and  misafiections  derived 
from  sinning  ancestors.  So  when  a  child,  during  the 
whole  period  of  impressions,  or  passive  recipiencies, 
previous  to  the  development  of  his  responsible  will, 
lives  in  the  life  and  feeling  of  his  parents,  and  they  in 
the  molds  of  the  Spirit,  they  will,  of  course,  be  shaping 
themselves  in  him,  or  him  in  themselves,  and  the  eifects 
wrought  in  him  will  be  preparations  of  what  he  will 
by-and-bye  do  from  himself;  seeds,  in  that  manner  pos- 
sibly, even  of  a  regenerate  life  and  character. 

That  we  ma}^  conceive  this  matter  more  adequately 
and  exactly,  consider,  a  moment,  that  whole  contour  of 
dispositions,  affections,  tempers,  afiinities,  aspirations, 
which  come  into  power  in  a  soul  after  the  will  is  set 
fast  in  a  life  of  duty  and  devotion.  These  things,  we 
conceive,  follow  in  a  sense  the  will,  and  then  become 
in  turn  a  new  element  about  the  will — a  new  heart,  as 
we  say,  prompting  to  new  acts  and  a  continued  life  of 
new*obedience.  Kow  what  I  would  af&rm  is,  that  just 
this  same  contour  of  dispositions  and  affinities  may  be 
prepared  under,  and  come  after,  the  will  of  the  parents, 
when  the  child  is  living  in  their  will,  and  be  ready  as  a 
new  element,  or  new  heart,  to  prompt  the  child's  will, 
or  put  it  forward  in  the  choice  of  all  duty,  whenever  it 


THE    NURTURE    BEGINS.  239 

is  SO  matured  as  to  clioose  for  itself.  Of  course  these 
regenerated  dispositions  and  affinities,  this  general  dis- 
posedness  to  good,  which  we  call  a  new  heart,  supposes 
a  work  of  the  Spirit ;  and,  if  the  parents  live  in  the 
Spirit  as  they  ought,  they  will  have  the  Spirit  for  the 
child  as  truly  as  for  themselves,  and  the  child  will  be 
grown,  so  to  speak,  in  the  molds  of  the  Spirit,  even 
from  his  infancy. 

This  will  be  yet  more  probable,  if  we  glance  at  some 
of  the  particular  facts  and  conditions  involved.  Thus 
if  we  speak  of  impressions,  or  the  age  of  impressions, 
and  of  that  as  an  age  prior  to  language,  what  kind  of 
religious  impressions  can  be  raised  in  a  soul,  it  may  be 
asked,  when  the  child  is  not  far  enough  developed  in 
language  to  be  taught  any  thing  about  God,  or  Christ, 
or  itself,  that  belongs  to  intelligence  ?  And  the  suffi- 
cient answer  must  be,  that  language  itself  has  no  mean- 
ing till  rudimental  impressions  are  first  begotten  in  the 
life  of  experience,  to  give  it  a  meaning.  Words  are 
useful  to  propagate  meanings,  or  to  farther  develop  and 
combine  meanings,  but  a  child  would  never  know  the 
meaning  of  any  word  in  a  language,  just  by  hearing 
the  sound  of  it  in  his  ears.  He  must  learn  to  put  the 
meaning  into  it,  by  having  found  that  meaning  in  his 
impressions,  and  then  the  word  becomes  significant. 
And  it  requires  a  certain  wakefulness  and  capacity  of 
intelligent  apprehension,  to  receive  or  take  up  such 
impressions.  Thus  a  dog  would  never  get  hold  of  any 
religious  impression  at  the  family  prayers,  all  his  life- 
time ;  but  a  child  will  be  fast  gathering  up,  out  of  his 


240  WHEN    AND    WHERE 

little  life  and  experience,  impressional  states  and  asso- 
ciations, that  give  meanings  to  the  words  of  prayer,  as 
they,  in  turn,  give  meanings  to  the  facts  of  his  experi- 
ence. All  language  supposes  impressions  first  made. 
The  word  liglit  does  not  signify  any  thing,  till  the  eye 
has  taken  the  impression  of  -light.  The  word  love  is 
unmeaning,  to  one  who  has  not  loved  and  received  love. 
The  word  God.,  raises  no  conception  of  God,  till  the 
idea  of  such  a  being  has  been  somehow  generated  and 
associated  with  that  particular  sound.  How  far  off  is  it 
then  from  all  sound  apprehensions  of  fact,  to  imagine 
that  nothing  religious  can  be  done  for  a  child  till  after 
he  is  far  enough  developed  in  language  to  be  taught ; 
when  in  fact  he  could  not  be  thus  developed  in  lan- 
guage at  all,  if  the  meanings  of  language  were  not 
somehow  started  in  him  by  the  impressions  derived 
from  his  experience. 

Observe,  again,  how  very  quick  the  child's  eye  is,  in 
the  passive  age  of  infancy,  to  catch  impressions,  and 
receive  the  meaning  of  looks,  voices,  and  motions.  It 
peruses  all  faces,  and  colors,  and  sounds.  Every  senti- 
ment that  looks  into  its  eyes,  looks  back  out  of  its 
eyes,  and  plays  in  miniature  on  its  countenance.  The 
tear  that  steals  down  the  cheek  of  a  mother's  suppressed 
grief,  gathers  the  little  infantile  face  into  a  respon- 
sive sob.  With  a  kind  of  wondering  silence,  which  is 
next  thing  to  adoration,  it  studies  the  mother  in  her 
prayer,  and  looks  up  piously  with  her,  in  that  explor- 
ing watch,  that  signifies  unspoken  prayer.  If  the  child 
is  handled  fretfully,  scolded,  jerked,  or  simply  laid  aside 


THE    NUETURE    BEGINS.  241 

unaffectionatelj,  in  no  warmth  of  motherly  gentleness, 
it  feels  the  sting  of  just  that  which  is  felt  towards  it ; 
and  so  it  is  angered  by  anger,  irritated  by  irritation, 
fretted  by  fretfulness;  having  thus  impressed,  just  that 
kind  of  impatience  or  ill-nature,  which  is  felt  towards 
it,  and  growing  faithfully  into  the  bad  mold  offered,  as 
by  a  fixed  law.  There  is  great  importance,  in  this  man- 
ner, even  in  the  handling  of  infancy.  If  it  is  unchris- 
tian, it  will  beget  unchristian  states,  or  impressions. 
If  it  is  gentle,  even  patient  and  loving,  it  prepares  a 
mood  and  temper  like  its  own.  There  is  scarcely  room 
to  doubt,  that  all  most  crabbed,  hateful,  resentful,  pas- 
sionate, ill-natured  characters;  all  most  even,  lovely, 
firm  and  true,  are  prepared,  in  a  great  degree,  by  the 
handling  of  the  nursery.  To  these  and  all  such  modes 
of  feeling  and  treatment  as  make  up  the  element  of  the 
infant's  life,  it  is  passive  as  wax  to  the  seal.  So  that  if 
we  consider  how  small  a  speck,  falling  into  the  nucleus 
of  a  crystal,  may  disturb  its  form ;  or,  how  even  a  mote 
of  foreign  matter  present  in  the  quickening  egg,  will 
suffice  to  produce  a  deformity ;  considering,  also,  on  the 
other  hand,  what  nice  conditions  of  repose,  in  one  case, 
and  what  accurately  modulated  supplies  of  heat  in  the 
other,  are  necessary  to  a  perfect  product ;  then  only  do 
we  begin  to  imagine  what  work  is  going  on,  in  the 
soul  of  a  child,  in  this  first  chapter  of  life,  the  age  of 
impressions. 

It  must  also  greatly  affect  our  judgments  on  this 
point,  to  observe  that,  when  this  first  age  of  impres- 
sions is  gone  by,  there  is,  after  that,  no  such  thing  any 


242  WHEN    AND    WHERE 

more  as  a  possibility  of  absolute  control.  Thus  far  the 
child  has  been  more  a  candidate  for  personality  than 
a  person.  He  has  been  as  a  seed  forming  in  the  cap- 
sule of  the  parent-stem,  getting  every  thing  from  that 
stem,  and  fashioned,  in  its  kind,  by  the  fashioning  kind 
of  that.  But  now,  having  been  gradually  and  imper- 
ceptibly ripened,  as  the  seed  separates  and  falls  off,  to 
be  another  and  complete  form  of  life  in  itself,  so  the 
child  comes  out,  in  his  own  power,  a  complete  person, 
able  to  choose  responsibly  for  himself.  Now  he  is  no 
more  in  the  power  of  the  parent,  as  before ;  the  domin- 
ion of  the  older  life  is  supplanted,  by  the  self-asserting 
competency  of  the  younger ;  what  can  the  old  stalk  do 
upon  the  seed  that  is  already  ripe  ?  The  transition  here 
is  very  gradual,  it  is  true,  covering  even  a  space  of 
years  ;  and  something  may  be  done  for  the  child's  char- 
acter by  instruction,  by  the  skillful  management  of  mo- 
tives, and  the  tender  solicitudes  of  parental  watching 
and  prayer ;  but  less  and  less,  of  course,  the  older  the 
child  becomes,  and  the  more  completely  his  personal 
responsibility  is  developed.  But  how  very  fearful  the 
change,  and  how  much  it  means,  that  the  child,  once 
plastic  and  passive  to  the  will  of  the  parent,  has  gotten 
by  the  point  of  absolute  disposability,  and  is  never 
again  to  be  properly  in  that  will !  The  perilous  power 
of  self-care  and  self-assertion  has  come,  and  what  is  to 
be  the  result  ?  And  how  much  does  it  signify  to  the 
parent,  when  he  feels  his  power  to  be  thus  growing  dif- 
ficult, weak,  doubtful,  or  finally  quite  ended !  What  a 
conception  it  is,  that  he  once  had  his  child  in  abso- 


THE    NURTURE    BEGINS.  243 

lute  direction,  and  the  fashioning  of  his  own  superior 
will,  to  dress,  to  feed,  to  handle,  to  plaj  himself  into 
his  sentiments,  be  the  disjDOsition  of  his  dispositions, 
the  temper  of  his  tempers.  Was  there  not  something 
great  to  be  done  then,  when  the  advantage  was  so 
great — now  to  be  done  no  more  ?  It  will  be  difficult 
to  shake  off  that  impression ;  impossible  to  a  really 
thoughtful  Christian  soul.  And  if  the  will,  now  ma- 
tured and  gone  over  into  complete  self-assertion,  rushes 
into  all  wildness  and  profligacy,  unrestrained  and  "un- 
restrainable,  the  recollection  of  a  time  when  it  was 
restrainable  and  could  have  been  molded,  even  as  wax 
itself,  will  return  with  inevitable  certainty  upon  the  pa- 
rents, and  taunt,  O  how  bitterly,  the  neglectfulness  and 
lightness,  by  which  they  cast  their  opportunity  away ! 

I  bring  into  view  accordingly,  just  here,  a  considera- 
tion that  goes  further  to  establish  the  position  I  am  as- 
serting, than  any  other,  and  one  that  is  naturally  sug- 
gested by  the  topic  just  adverted  to.  We  call  this  first 
chapter  of  life  the  age  of  impressions ;  we  speak  of  the 
child  as  being  in  a  sense  passive  and  plastic,  living  in 
the  will  of  the  parents,  having  no  will  developed  for 
responsible  action.  It  might  be  imagined  from  the  use 
of  such  terms,  that  the  infant  or  very  young  child  has 
no  will  at  all.  But  that  is  not  any  true  conception.  It 
has  no  responsible  will,  because  it  is  not  acquainted,  as 
yet,  with  those  laws  and  limits  and  conditions  of  choice 
that  make  it  responsible.  Kevertheless  it  has  will, 
blind  will,  as  strongly  developed  as  any  other  facult}^, 
and  sometimes  even  most  strongly  of  all.      The  mani- 


244  WHEN    AND    WHERE 

festations  of  it  are  sometimes  even  frightful.  And  pre- 
cisely this  it  is  which  makes  the  age  of  impressions,  the 
age  prior  to  language  and  responsible  choice,  most  pro- 
foundly critical  in  its  importance.  It  is  the  age  in 
which  the  will-power  of  the  soul  is  to  be  tamed  or  sub- 
ordinated to  a  higher  control ;  that  of  obedience  to  pa- 
rents, that  of  duty  and  religion.  And,  in  this  view,  it  is 
that  every  thing  most  important  to  the  religious  char- 
acter turns  just  here.  Is  this  infant  child  to  fill  the 
universe  with  his  complete  and  total  self-assertion,  own- 
ing no  superior,  or  is  he  to  learn  the  self-submission 
of  allegiance,  obedience,  duty  to  God  ?  Is  he  to  become 
a  demon  let  loose  in  Grod's  eternity,  or  an  angel  and 
free  prince  of  the  realm  ? 

That  he  may  be  this,  he  is  now  given,  will  and  all, 
as  wax,  to  the  wise  molding-power  of  control.  Begin- 
ning, then,  to  lift  his  will  in  mutiny,  and  swell  in  self- 
asserting  obstinacy,  refusing  to  go  or  come,  or  stand,  or 
withhold  in  this  or  that,  let  there  be  no  fight  begun,  or 
issue  made  with  him,  as  if  it  were  the  true  thing  now 
to  break  his  will,  or  drive  him  out  of  it  by  mere  terrors 
and  pains.  This  willfulness,  or  obstinacy,  is  not  so 
purely  bad,  or  evil,  as  it  seems.  It  is  partly  his  feeling 
of  himself  and  you,  in  which  he  is  getting  hold  of  the 
conditions  of  authority,  and  feeling  out  his  limitations. 
N'o,  this  breaking  of  a  child's  will  to  which  many  well- 
meaning  parents  set  themselves,  with  such  instant, 
almost  passionate  resolution,  is  the  way  they  take  to 
make  him  a  coward,  or  a  thief,  or  a  hypocrite,  or  a 
mean-spirited  and  driveling  sycophant — nothing  in  fact 


THE    NURTUKE    BEGINS.  245 

is  more  dreadful  to  thought  than  this  breaking  of  a 
will,  when  it  breaks,  as  it  often  does,  the  personality 
itself,  and  all  highest,  noblest  firmness  of  manhood.  The 
true  problem  is  different ;  it  is  not  to  break,  but  to 
bend  rather,  to  draw  the  will  down,  or  away  from  self- 
assertion  toward  self-devotion,  to  teach  it  the  way  of 
submitting  to  wise  limitations,  and  raise  it  into  the  great 
and  glorious  liberties  of  a  state  of  loyalty  to  God.  See 
then  how  it  is  to  be  done.  The  child  has  no  force, 
however  stout  he  is  in  his  will.  Take  him  up  then, 
when  the  fit  is  upon  him,  carry  him,  stand  him  on  his 
feet,  set  him  here  or  therej  do  just  that  in  him  which 
he  refuses  to  do  in  himself — all  this  gently  and  kindly, 
as  if  he  were  capable  of  maintaining  no  issue  at  all. 
Do  it  again  and  again,  as  often  as  may  be  necessary. 
By-and-bye,  he  will  begin  to  perceive  that  his  obstinacy 
is  but  the  fussing  of  his  weakness ;  till  finally,  as  the 
sense  of  limitation  comes  up  into  a  sense  of  law  and 
duty,  he  will  be  found  to  have  learned,  even  before- 
hand, the  folly  of  mere  self-assertion.  And  when  he 
has  reached  this  point  of  felt  obligation  to  obedience, 
it  will  no  longer  break  him  down  to  enforce  his  com- 
pliance, but  it  will  even  exalt  into  greater  dignity  and 
capacity,  that  sublime  power  of  self-government,  by 
which  his  manhood  is  to  be  most  distinguished. 

By  a  different  treatment  at  the  point  or  crisis  just 
named,  that  is  by  raising  an  issue  to  be  driven  straight 
through  by  terror  and  storm,  one  of  two  results  almost 
equally  bad  were  likely  to  follow ;  the  child  would 
either  have  been  quite  broken  down  by  fear,  the  lowest 


246  WHEN    AND    WHERE 

of  all  possible  motives  when  separated  from  moral  con- 
victions, or  else  would  have  been  made  a  hundred  fold 
more  obstinate  bj  his  triumph.  Nature  provided  for 
his  easy  subjugation,  by  putting  him  in  the  hands  of  a 
superior  strength,  which  could  manage  him  without 
any  fight  of  enforcement — to  have  him  schooled  and 
tempered  to  a  customary  self-surrender  which  takes 
nothing  from  his  natural  force  and  manliness.  And  so 
is  accomplished  what,  in  one  view,  is  the  great  problem 
of  life ;  that  on  which  all  duty  and  allegiance  to  God, 
in  the  state  even  of  conversion,  depends. 

It  only  remains  to  add  that  we  are  not  to  assume  the 
comparative  unimportance  of  what  is  done  upon  a  child, 
in  his  age  of  impressions,  because  there  is  really  no 
character  of  virtue  or  vice,  of  blame  or  praise,  devel- 
oped in  that  age.  Be  it  so — it  is  so  by  the  supposi- 
tion. But  the  power,  the  root,  the  seed,  is  implanted 
nevertheless,  in  most  cases,  of  what  he  will  be.  Not  in 
every  case,  but  often,  the  seed  of  a  regenerate  life  is 
implanted — that  which  makes  the  child  a  Christian  in 
God's  view,  as  certainly  as  if  he  were  already  out  in 
the  testimony  and  formal  profession  of  his  faith.  I 
was  just  now  speaking  of  the  dreadful  power  of  will 
or  willfulness,  some  times  manifested  even  in  this  first 
age,  that  we  have  called  the  age  of  impressions,  and  of 
the  ways  in  which,  by  one  kind  of  mismanagement  or 
another,  the  character  may  be  turned  to  vices  that  are 
ais  opposite,  as  the  vices  of  meanness  and  the  crimes  of 
violence  and  blood.  So  it  will  be  found  that  almost 
every  sort  of  mismanagement,  or  neglect,  plants  some 


THE    NUETUEE    BEGINS.  247 

seed  of  vice  and  misery  that  grows  out  afterwards  into 
a  cliaracter  in  its  own  kind.  Thus  the  child  by  a  con- 
tinually worry  of  his  little  life,  under  abusive  words, 
and  harsh,  flashy  tempers,  grows  to  be  a  bed  of  nettles 
in  all  his  personal  tempers,  and  will  so  be  prepared  to 
break  out,  in  the  age  of  choice,  into  almost  any  vice  of 
ill-nature.  A  child  can  be  pampered  in  feeding,  so  as 
to  become,  in  a  sense,  all  body  ;  so  that,  when  he  comes 
into  choice  and  responsible  action,  he  is  already  a  con- 
firmed sensualist,  showing  it  in  the  lines  of  his  face, 
even  before  it  appears  in  his  tastes,  habits  and  vices. 
Thus  we  have  a  way  of  wondering  that  the  children  of 
this  or  that  family  should  turn  out  so  poorly,  but  the 
real  fact  is,  probably,  if  we  knew  it,  that  what  we  call 
their  turning  out,  is  only  their  growing  out,  in  just  that 
which  was  first  grown  in,  by  the  mismanagement  of 
their  infancy  and  childhood.  What  they  took  in  as 
impression,  or  contagion,  is  developed  by  choice — not 
at  once,  perhaps,  but  finally,  after  the  poison  has  had 
time  to  work.  And  in  just  the  same  way,  doubtless, 
it  may  be  true,  in  multitudes  of  Christian  conversions, 
that  what  appear  to  be  such  to  others,  and  also  to  the 
subjects  themselves,  are  only  the  restored  activity  and 
more  fully  developed  results  of  some  predispositional 
state,  or  initially  sanctified  property,  in  the  tempers  and 
subtle  affinities  of  their  childhood.  They  are  now 
born  into  that  by  the  assent  of  their  own  will,  which 
they  were  in  before,  without  their  will.  What  they 
do  not  remember  still  remembers  them,  and  now  claims 
a  right  in  them.     What  was  before  unconscious,  flames 


248  WHEN    AND    WHERE 

out  into  consciousness,  and  thej  break  forth  into  praise 
and  thanksgiving,  in  that  which,  long  ago,  took  them 
initially,  and  touched  them  softly  without  thanks.  For 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  seed  of  character  in  religion, 
preceding  all  religious  development.  Even  as  Calvin, 
speaking  of  the  regenerative  grace  there  may  be  in  the 
heart  of  infancy  itself,  testifies — "the  work  of  God  is 
not  yet  without  existence,  because  it  is  not  observed 
and  understood  by  us." 

By  these  and  many  other  considerations  that  might 
be  named,  it  is  made  clear,  I  think,  to  any  judicious 
and  thoughtful  person,  that  the  most  important  age  of 
Christian  nurture  is  the  first ;  that  which  we  have  called 
the  age  of  impressions,  just  that  age,  in  which  the  du- 
ties and  cares  of  a  really  Christian  nurture  are  so  com- 
monly postponed,  or  assumed  to  have  not  yet  arrived. 
I  have  no  scales  to  measure  quantities  of  effect  in  this 
matter  of  early  training,  but  I  may  be  allowed  to  ex- 
press my  solemn  conviction,  that  more,  as  a  general  fact, 
is  done,  or  lost  by  neglect  of  doing,  on  a  child's  immor- 
tality, in  the  first  three  years  of  his  life,  than  in  all  his 
years  of  discipline  afterwards.  And  I  name  this  partic- 
ular time,  or  date,  that  I  may  not  be  supposed  to  lay  the 
chief  stress  of  duty  and  care  on  the  latter  part  of  what  I 
have  called  the  age  of  impressions ;  which,  as  it  is  a  mat- 
ter somewhat  indefinite,  may  be  taken  to  cover  the  space 
of  three  or  four  times  this  number  of  years ;  the  devel- 
opment of  language,  and  of  moral  ideas  being  only  par- 
tially accomplished,  in  most  cases,  for  so  long  a  time. 
Let  every  Christian  father  and  mother  understand,  when 


THE    NUKTURE    BEGINS.  249 

their  child  is  three  years  old,  that  they  have  done  more 
than  half  of  all  they  will  ever  do  for  his  character. 
"What  can  be  more  strangely  wide  of  all  just  apprehen- 
sion, than  the  immense  efficacy,  imputed  by  most  pa- 
rents to  the  Christian  ministry,  compared  with  what 
they  take  to  be  the  almost  insignificant  power  conferred 
on  them  in  their  parental  charge  and  duties.  Why,  if 
all  preachers  of  Christ  could  have  their  hearers,  for 
whole  months  and  years,  in  their  own  will,  as  parents 
do  their  children,  so  as  to  move  them  by  a  look,  a  mo 
tion,  a  smile,  a  frown,  and  act  their  own  sentiments  and 
emotions  over  in  them  at  pleasure ;  if,  also,  a  little 
farther  on,  they  had  them  in  authority  to  command, 
direct,  tell  them  whither  to  go,  what  to  learn,  what  to 
do,  regulate  their  hours,  their  books,  their  pleasures, 
their  company,  and  call  them  to  prayer  over  their  own 
knees  every  night  and  morning,  who  could  think  it 
impossible,  in  the  use  of  such  a  power,  to  produce 
almost  any  result  ?  Should  not  such  a  ministry  be  ex- 
pected to  fashion  all  who  come  under  it  to  newness  of 
life  ?  Let  no  parent,  shifting  off  his  duties  to  his  chil- 
dren, in  this  manner,  think  to  have  his  defects  made 
up,  and  the  consequent  damages  mended  afterwards, 
when  they  have  come  to  their  maturity,  by  the  compar- 
atively slender,  always  doubtful,  efficacy  of  preaching 
and  pulpit  harangue. 

If  now  I  am  right  in  the  view  I  have  been  trying  to 
establish,  it  will  readily  occur  to  you  that  irreparable 
damage  may  be  and  must  often  be  done  by  the  self- 
indulgence  of  those  parents,  who  place  their  children 


250  WHEN    AND    WHERE 

mostly  in  tlie  charge  of  nurses  and  attendants  for 
just  those  years  of  their  life,  in  which  the  greatest  and 
most  absolute  effects  are  to  be  wrought  in  their  charac- 
ter. The  lightness  that  prevails,  on  this  point,  is  really 
astonishing.  Many  parents  do  not  even  take  pains  to 
know  any  thing  about  the  tempers,  the  truthfulness, 
the  character  generally,  of  the  nurses  to  whom  their 
children  are  thus  confidingly  trusted.  ISTo  matter — the 
child  is  too  young  to  be  poisoned,  or  at  all  hurt,  by 
their  influence.  And  so  they  give  over,  to  these  faith- 
less and  often  cruelly  false  hirelings  of  the  nursery,  to 
be  always  with  them,  under  their  power,  associated  with 
their  persons,  handled  by  their  roughness,  and  im- 
printed, day  and  night,  by  the  coarse,  bad  sentiments 
of  their  voices  and  faces,  these  helpless,  hapless  beings 
whom  they  call  their  children,  and  think  they  are  really 
making  much  of,  in  the  instituting  of  a  nursery  for 
them  and  their  keeping.  Such  a  mother  ought  to  see 
that  she  is  making  much  more  of  herself  than  of  her 
child.  This  whole  scheme  of  nurture  is  a  scheme  of 
self-indulgence.  Now  is  the  time  when  her  little  one 
most  needs  to  see  her  face,  and  hear  her  voice,  and  feel  her 
gentle  hand.  Now  is  the  time  when  her  child's  eternity 
pleads  most  entreatingly  for  the  benefit  of  her  motherly 
charge  and  presence.  What  mother  would  not  be  dis- 
mayed by  the  thought  of  having  her  family  grow  up 
into  the  sentiments  of  her  nurse,  and  come  forward  into 
life  as  being  in  the  succession  to  her  character !  And 
yet  how  often  is  this  most  exactly  what  she  has 
provided  for. 


THE    NURTURE    BEGINS.  251 

Again,  it  is  very  clear  that,  in  this  early  kind  of  nur- 
ture, faithfully  maintained,  there  is  a  call  for  the  great- 
est personal  holiness  in  the  parents,  and  that  just  those 
conditions  are  added,  which  will  make  true  holiness 
closest  to  nature,  and  most  beautifully  attractive — saving 
it  from  all  the  repulsive  appearances  of  severity  and  sanc- 
timony. In  this  charge  and  nurture  of  infant  children, 
nothing  is  to  be  done  by  an  artificial,  lecturing  process ; 
nothing,  or  little  by  what  can  be  called  government. 
We  are  to  get  our  effects  chiefly  by  just  being  what  we 
ought,  and  making  a  right  presence  of  love  and  life  to 
our  children.  They  are  in  a  plastic  age  that  is  receiv- 
ing its  type,  not  from  our  words,  but  from  our  spirit, 
and  whose  character  is  shaping  in  the  molds  of  ours. 
Living  under  this  conviction,  we  are  held  to  a  sound 
verity  and  reality  in  every  thing.  The  defect  of  our 
character  is  not  to  be  made  up  here,  by  the  sanctity  of 
our  words ;  we  must  be  all  that  we  would  have  our 
children  feel  and  receive.  Thus,  if  a  man  were  to  be 
set  before  a  mirror,  with  the  feeling  that  the  exact  im- 
age of  what  he  is,  for  the  day,  is  there  to  be  produced 
and  left  as  a  permanent  and  fixed  image  forever,  to  what 
carefulness,  what  delicate  sincerity  of  spirit  would  he 
be  moved.  And  will  he  be  less  moved  to  the  same, 
when  that  mirror  is  the  soul  of  his  child  ? 

Inducted,  thus,  into  a  more  profoundly  real  holiness, 
we  shall,  at  the  same  time,  grow  more  natural  in  it. 
The  family  quality  of  our  piety,  living  itself  into  our 
children,  will  moisten  the  dry  individualism  we  suffer, 
relieve  the  eccentricities  we  display,  set  purity  in  the 


252  WHEN    AND    WHERE. 

place  of  bustle  and  presumption,  growth  in  the  place  of 
conquest,  sound  health  in  the  place  of  spasmodic  exalt- 
ations ;  for  when  a  conviction  is  felt  in  Christian  fami- 
lies, that  living  is  to  be  a  means  of  grace,  and  as  God  will 
suffer  it,  a  regenerating  power,  then  will  our  piety  be- 
come a  domestic  spirit,  and  as  much  more  tender,  as  it 
is  closer  to  the  life  of  childhood.  Now,  we  have  a 
kind  of  piety  that  contains,  practically  speaking,  only 
adults,  or  those  who  are  old  enough  to  reflect  and  act 
for  themselves,  and  it  is  as  if  we  lived  in  an  adult  worM^ 
where  every  one  is  for  himself.  If  we  could  abolish 
also  distinctions  of  age,  and  sex,  and  of&ce,  we  should 
only  make  up  a  style  of  religion  somewhat  drier  and 
farther  off  from  nature  than  we  now  have.  We  can 
never  come  into  the  true  mode  of  living  that  God  has 
appointed  for  us,  until  we  regard  each  generation  as 
hovering  over  the  next,  acting  itself  into  the  next,  and 
casting  thus  a  type  of  character  in  the  next,  before  it 
comes  to  act  for  itself.  Then  we  shall  have  gentle  cares 
and  feelings ;  then  the  families  will  become  bonds  of 
spiritual  life;  example,  education  and  government, 
being  Christian  powers,  will  be  regukted  by  a  Christian 
spirit ;  the  rigidities  of  religious  principle  will  be  soft- 
ened by  the  tender  affections  of  nature  twining  among 
them,  and  the  common,  life  of  the  house  dignified  by 
the  sober  and  momentous  cares  of  the  life  to  come. 
And  thus  Christian  piety,  being  oftener  a  habit  in  the 
soul  than  a  conquest  over  it,  will  be  as  much  more 
respectable  and  consistent  as  it  is  earlier  in  the  birth 
and  closer  to  nature. 


11. 


PARENTAL    ttUALIFICATIONS. 

"  For  I  know  him,  that  he  will  command  his  children  and  his  house- 
hold after  him,  and  they  shall  keep  the  way  of  the  Lord." — Genesis^ 
xviii.  19. 

The  real  point  of  tlie  declaration,  here,  is  not  that 
Abraham  will  command  his  children,  but  that  he  is 
such  a  man,  having  such  qualities  or  qualifications  as 
to  be  able  to  command,  certain  to  command,  and  train 
them  into  an  obedient  and  godly  life.  The  declaration 
is,  you  will  observe — "For  I  know  Aim;"  not  simply 
and  directly — "For  I  know  the  fact."  Every  thing 
turns  on  what  is  m  him,  as  a  father  and  householder — 
his  qualifications,  dispositions,  principles,  and  modes  of 
life — and  the  declaration  is,  that  what  he  is  to  do,  will 
certainly  come  out  of  what  he  is.  He  will  certainly 
produce,  or  train  a  godly  family,  because  it  is  in  him, 
as  a  man,  to  do  nothing  else  or  less.  The  subject  raised 
then  by  the  declaration  is,  not  so  much  family  training 
and  government,  as  it  is — 

The  ^personal  and  religious  qualifications,  or  qualifica" 
tions  of  character,  necessary  to  success  in  such  family 
training  and  government. 

There  is  almost  no  duty  or  work,  in  this  world,  that 
does  not  require  s'ome  outfit  of  qualifications,  in  order 
to  the  doing  of  it  welL     We  all  understand  that  some 

22 


254  PARENTAL    QUALIFICATIONS. 

kind  of  preparation  is  necessary  to  fill  the  place  of  a 
magistrate,  teacli  a  school,  drill  a  troop  of  soldiers,  or 
do  any  such  thing,  in  a  right  manner.  Nay,  we  admit 
the  necessity  of  serving  some  kind  of  apprenticeship, 
in  order  to  become  duly  qualified  for  the  calling,  only 
of  a  milliner,  or  a  tailor.  And  yet,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
we  go  into  what  we  call  the  Christian  training  of  our 
children,  without  any  preparation  for  it  whatever,  and 
apparently  without  any  such  conviction  of  negligence 
or  absurdity,  as  at  all  disturbs  our  assurance  in  what  we 
do.  Wot  that  young  parents,  and  especially  young 
mothers,  are  not  often  heard  lamenting  their  conscious 
insufiiciency  for  the  charge  that  is  put  upon  them,  but 
that,  in  such  regrets,  they  commonly  mean  nothing 
more  than  that  they  feel  very  tenderly,  and  want  to  do 
better  things  than,  in  fact,  any  body  can.  It  does  not 
mean,  as  a  general  thing,  that  they  are  practically  en- 
deavoring to  get  hold  of  such  qualifications  as  they 
want,  in  order  to  their  Christian  success.  After  all,  it 
is  likely  to  be  assumed  that  they  have  their  sufficient 
equipment  in  the  tender  instinct  of  their  natural  affec- 
tion itself  So  they  go  on,  as  in  a  kind  of  venture,  to 
command,  govern,  manage,  punish,  teach,  and  turn 
about  the  way  of  their  child,  in  just  such  tempers,  and 
ways  of  example  and  views  of  life,  as  chance  to  be  the 
element  of  their  own  disfigured,  ill-begotten  character, 
at  the  time.  This,  in  short,  is  their  sin — the  undoing, 
as  it^ill  by-and-bye  appear,  of  their  children — that  they 
undertake  their  most  sacred  office,  without  any  sacred 
qualifications;    govern   without    self-government,    dis- 


PARENTAL    QUALIFICATIONS.  255 

charge  the  holiest  responsibilities  irresponsibly,  and 
thrust  their  children  into  evil,  by  the  evil  and  bad  mind, 
out  of  which  their  training  proceeds. 

I  know  not  any  thing  that  better  shows  the  utter  in- 
competency of  mere  natural  affection  as  an  equipment 
for  the  parental  office,  or  that,  in  a  short  way,  proves 
the  fixed  necessity  in  it,  of  some  broader  competency 
and  higher  qualification,  than  just  to  glance  at  the 
real  cruelties,  even  commonly  perpetrated,  under  just 
those  tender,  faithful  instigations  of  natural  affection, 
that  we  so  readily  expect  to  be  a  kind  of  infallible 
protection  to  the  helplessness  of  infancy.  How  often  is 
it  a  fact,  that  the  fondest  parents,  owing  to  some  want 
of  insight,  or  of  patience,  or  even  to  some  uninstructed, 
only  half  intelligent  desire  to  govern  their  child,  will 
do  it  the  greatest  wrongs — stinging  every  day  and  hour, 
the  little  defenseless  being,  committed  to  their  love, 
with  the  sense  of  bitter  injustice;  driving  in  the 
ploughshare  of  abuse  and  blame  upon  its  tender  feeling, 
by  harsh  words  and  pettish  chastisements,  when,  in  fact, 
the  very  thing, in  the  child  that  annoys  them  is,  that 
they  themselves  have  thrown  it  into  a  fit  of  uneasiness 
and  partial  disorder,  by  their  indiscreet  feeding ;  or  that 
in  some  appearance  of  irritability,  or  insubjection,  it  has 
only  not  the  words  to  speak  of  its  pain,  or  explain  its 
innocence.  The  little  child's  element  of  existence  be- 
comes, in  this  manner,  not  seldom,  an  element  of  bitter 
wrong,  and  the  sting  of  wounded  justice  grows  in,  so 
to  speak,  poisoning  the  soul  all  through,  by  its  immed- 
icable rancor.     The  pain  of  such  wrong  goes  deeper, 


256  PAKENTAL    QUALIFICATIONS. 

too,  than  many  fancy.  No  other  creature  suffers  under 
conscious  injury  so  intensely.  And  the  mischief  done 
is  only  aggravated  by  the  fact  that  the  sufferer  has  no 
power  of  redress,  and  has  no  alternative  permitted,  but 
either  to  be  cowed  into  a  weak  and  cringing  submission, 
or  else,  when  his  nobler  nature  has  too  much  stuff  in  it 
for  that,  to  be  stiffened  in  hate  and  the  bitter  grudges 
of  wrong.  I  know  not  any  thing  more  sad  to  think  of, 
than  the  cruelties  put  upon  children  in  this  manner. 
It  makes  up  a  chapter  which  few  persons  read,  and 
which  almost  every  body  takes  for  granted  can  not 
exist.  For  the  honor  of  our  human  nature,  I  wish  it 
could  not ;  and  that  what  we  call  maternal  affection,  the 
softest,  dearest,  most  self-sacrificing  of  all  earthly  forms 
of  tenderness  and  fidelity,  were,  at  least,  sufficient  to 
save  the  dishonor,  which,  alas!  it  is  not;  for  these 
wrongs  are,  in  fact,  the  cruelties  of  motherhood,  and  as 
often,  I  may  add,  of  an  even  over-fond  motherhood,  as 
any — wrongs  of  which  the  doers  are  unconscious,  and 
which  never  get  articulated,  save  by  the  sobbings  of 
the  little  bosom,  where  the  sting  of  injury  is  felt. 

Here,  then,  at  just  the  point  where  we  should,  least 
of  all,  look  for  it,  viz :  at  the  point  of  maternal  affec- 
tion itself,  we  have  displayed,  in  sadly  convincing  evi- 
dence, the  need  and  high  significance  of  those  better 
qualifications  of  mind  and  character,  by  which  the 
training  of  children  becomes  properly  Christian,  and 
upon  which,  as  being  such,  the  success  of  that  training 
depends.     Few  persons,  I  apprehend,  have  any  concep- 


PARENTAL    QUALIFICATIONS.  257 

tion,  on  the.  other  hand,  of  the  immense  nnmber  and 
sweep  of  the  disqualifications  that,  in  nominally  or 
even  really  Christian  parents,  go  in  to  hinder,  and  spoil 
of  all  success,  the  religious  nurture  of  their  children. 
Sometimes  the  disqualification  is  this,  and  sometimes  it 
is  that;  sometimes  conscious,  sometimes  unconscious; 
sometimes  observable  by  others  and  well  understood,  and 
sometimes  undiscovered.  The  variety  is  infinite,  and 
the  modes  of  combination  subtle,  to  such  a  degree,  that 
persons  taken  to  be  eminently  holy  in  their  life,  will 
have  all  their  prayers  and  counsels  blasted,  by  some 
hidden  fatality,  whose  root  is  never  known,  or  sus- 
pected, whether  by  others,  or  possibly  by  themselves. 
The  wonder  that  children,  whose  parents  were  in  high 
esteem  for  their  piety,  should  so  often  grow  up  into  a 
vicious  and  ungodly  life,  would,  I  think,  give  way  to 
just  the  contrary  wonder,  if  only  some  just  conception 
were  had  of  the  various,  multifarious,  unknown,  unsus- 
pected disqualifications,  by  which  modes  of  nurture, 
otherwise  good,  are  fatally  poisoned. 

Sometimes,  for  example,  it  is  a  fatal  mischief,  going 
before  on  the  child,  but  probably  unknown  to  the 
world,  that  the  parents,  one  or  both,  or  it  may  be  the 
mother  especially,  does  not  accept  the  child  willingly, 
but  only  submits  to  the  maternal  office  and  charge,  as 
to  some  hard  necessity.  This  charge  is  going  to  detain 
her  at  home,  and  limit  her  freedom.  Or  it  will  take  her 
away  from  the  shows  and  pleasures  for  which  she  is  liv- 
ing. Or  it  will  burden  her  days  and  nights  with  cares 
that  weary  her  self-indulgence.     Or  she  is  not  fond  of 

22^ 


258  PARENTAL    QUALIFICATIONS. 

cliildren,  and  never  means  to  be  fond  of  them — they  are 
not  worth  the  trouble  they  cost.     Indulging  these  and 
such  like  discontents,  unwisely  and  even  cruelly  pro- 
voked, not  unlikely,  by  the  unchristian  discontents  and 
foolish  speeches  of  her  husband,  she  poisons  both  her- 
self and  her  child  beforehand,  and  receives  it  with  no 
really  glad  welcome,  when  she  takes  it  to  her  bosom. 
Strange  mortal  perversity  that  can  thus  repel,  as  a  harsh 
intrusion,  one  of  God's  dearest  gifts ;  that  which  is  the 
date  of  the  house  in  its  coming,  and  comes  to  unseal  a 
new  passion,  whereby  life  itself  shall  be  duplicated  in 
meaning,  as  in  love  and  duty !     This  abuse  of  marriage 
is,  in  fact,  an  offense  against  nature,  and  is  no  doubt 
bitterly  offensive  to  God.     Though  commonly  spoken  of, 
in  a  way  of  astonishing  lightness,  it  is  just  that  sin,  by 
which  every  good  possibility  of  the  family  is  corrupted. 
What  can  two  parents  do  for  the  child,  they  only  sub- 
mit to  look  upon,  and  take  as  a  foundling  to  their  care  ? 
If  they  have  some  degree  of  evidence  in  them  that  they 
are  Christian  disciples,  they  will  have  fatally  clouded 
that  evidence,  by  a  contest  with  God's  Providence,  so 
irreverent  to  Him,  and  so  cruel  to  their  child.     If  now, 
at  last,  they  somewhat  love  the  child,  which  is  theirs 
by  compulsion,  what  office  of  a  really  Christian  nurture 
can  they  fill  in  its  behalf?     They  are  under  a  complete 
and  total  disqualification,  as  respects  the  duties  of  their 
charge.     They  are  out  of  rest  in  God,  out  of  confidence 
toward  Him,  hindered  in  their  prayers,    lost   to  that 
sweetness  of  love  and  peace  which  ought  to  be  the  ele- 
ment of  their  house.     Delving  on  thus,  from  such  a 


PARENTAL    QUALIFICATIONS.  259 

point  of  beginning,  and  assuming  tlie  possible  cliance 
of  success,  in  what  they  may  do  in  the  spirit  of  such 
a  beginning,  is  simply  absurd.  What  can  they  do  in 
training  a  child  for  God,  which  they  have  accepted, 
at  his  hands,  only  as  being  thrust  upon  them  by 
compulsion  ? 

I  might  speak  of  other  disqualifications  that  have  a 
similar  character,  as  implying  some  disagreement  with 
Providence.  But  it  must  suffice  to  say  generally,  that 
there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  a  genuine  Christian  nur- 
ture that  is  out  of  peace  with  God's  Providence — in 
any  respect.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  when  that  peace  is 
the  element  of  the  house,  and  sweetens  every  thing  in 
it — pain,  sickness,  loss,  the  bitter  cup  of  poverty, 
every  ill  of  adversity  or  sting  of  wrong — then  it  is,  and 
there,  as  nowhere  else,  that  children  are  most  sure  to 
grow  up  into  God's  beauty,  and  a  blessed  and  good  life. 
The  child  that  is  born  to  such  keeping,  and  lovingly 
lapped  in  the  peaceful  trust  of  Providence,  is  born  to  a 
glorious  heritage.  On  the  other  hand,  where  the  en- 
deavor and  life-struggle  of  the  house  is,  at  bottom,  a 
fight  with  Providence ;  envious,  eager,  anxious,  out  of 
content,  out  of  rest,  full  of  complaint  and  railings,  it 
is  impossible  that  any  thing  Christian  should  grow  in 
such  an  element.     The  disqualification  is  complete. 

Another  whole  class  of  disqualifications  require  to  be 
named  by  themselves ;  those  I  mean  which  are  caused 
by  a  bad  or  false  morality  in  the  parties,  at  some  point 
where  the  failure  is  not  suspected,  and  misses  being 


260  PARENTAL    QUALIFICATIONS. 

corrected  by  tlie  slender  and  very  partial  experience 
of  their  discipleship. 

They  are  persons,  for  example,  who  make  much  of 
principles  in  their  words,  and  really  think  that  they  are 
governed  by  principles,  when,  in  fact,  they  do  every 
thing  for  some  reason  of  policy,  and  value  their  princi- 
ples, more  entirely  than  they  know,  for  what  they  are 
worth  in  the  computations  of  policy.  Contrivance, 
artifice,  or  sometimes  cunning,  is  the  element  of  the 
house.  A  subtle,  inveterate  habit  of  scheming  creeps 
into  all  the  reasons  of  duty ;  and  duty  is  done,  not  for 
duty's  sake,  but  for  the  reasons,  or  prudential  benefits 
to  be  secured  by  it.  Even  the  praying  of  the  house 
takes  on  a  prudential  air,  much  as  if  it  were  done  for 
some  reason  not  stated.  A  stranger  in  the  house,  see- 
ing no  scandalous  wrong,  but  a  fine  show  of  principle, 
has  a  certain  sense  of  coldness  upon  him,  which  he  can 
not  account  for.  How  much  of  true  Christian  nurture 
there  may  be  in  such  a  house,  it  is  not  difficult  to 
judge.  Here,  probably,  is  going  to  be  one  of  the 
cases,  where  everybody  wonders  that  children  brought 
up  so  correctly,  turn  out  so  badly.  It  is  not  under- 
stood that  such  children  were  brought  up  to  know  prin- 
ciples, only  as  a  stunted  undergrowth  of  prudence,  and 
that  now  the  result  appears. 

Again  there  is,  in  some  persons,  who  appear,  in  all 
other  respects,  to  be  Christian,  a  strange  defect  of  truth 
or  truthfulness.  They  are  not  conscious  of  it.  They 
would  take  it  as  a  cruel  injustice,  were  they  only  to 
suspect  their  acquaintances  of  holding  such  an  estimate 


PARENTAL    QUALIFICATIONS.  261 

of  them.  And  yet  there  is  a  want  of  truth  in  every 
sort  of  demonstration  they  make.  It  is  not  their  words 
only  that  lie,  but  their  voice,  air,  action,  their  every 
puttiug  forth  has  a  lying  character.  The  atmosphere 
they  live  in  is  an  atmosphere  of  pretense.  Their  vir- 
tues are  affectations.  Their  compassions  and  sympa- 
thies are  the  airs  they  put  on.  Their  friendship  is  their 
mood  and  nothing  more.  And  yet  they  do  not  know 
it.  They  mean,  it  may  be,  no  fraud.  They  only  cheat 
themselves  so  effectually  as  to  believe,  that  what  they 
are  only  acting  is  their  truth.  And,  what  is  difficult  to 
reconcile,  they  have  a  great  many  Christian  sentiments, 
they  maintain  prayer  as  a  habit,  and  will  sometimes 
speak  intelligently  of  matters  of  Christian  experience. 
But  how  dreadful  must  be  the  effect  of  such  a  charac- 
ter, on  the  simple,  trustful  soul  of  a  little  child.  When 
the  crimen  falsi  is  in  every  thing  heard,  and  looked 
upon,  and  done,  he  may  grow  up  into  a  hypocrite,  or  a 
thief,  but  what  shall  make  him  a  genuine  Christian  ? 

In  the  same  manner,  I  could  go  on  to  show  a  multi- 
tude of  disqualifications  for  the  office  of  a  genuine 
Christian  nurture,  that  are  created  by  a  bad  or  defect- 
ive morality,  in  parents  who  live  a  credibly  Christian 
life.  They  make  a  great  virtue,  it  may  be,  of  frugality 
or  economy,  and  settle  every  thing  into  a  scale  of  insup- 
portable parsimony  and  meanness.  Or,  they  make  a 
praise  of  generous  living,  and  run  it  into  a  profligate 
and  spendthrift  habit.  Or,  they  make  such  a  virtue  of 
honor  and  magnanimity,  as  to  set  the  opinions  and 
principles  of  men  in  deference,  above  the  principles  of 


262  PARENTAL    QUALIFICATIONS. 

God.  Or,  tliej  get  their  chief  motives  of  action  out  of 
the  appearances  of  virtue,  and  not  out  of  its  reali- 
ties. There  is  no  end  to  the  impostures  of  bad  mo- 
rality, that  find  a  place  in  the  lives  of  reputably  Chris- 
tian persons.  They  are  generally  too  subtle  to  be 
detected  by  the  inspection  of  their  consciousness,  and 
very  commonly  pass  unobserved  by  others.  And  yet 
they  have  power  to  poison  the  nurture  of  the  house, 
even  though  it  appears  to  be,  in  some  respects.  Chris- 
tian. Hence  the  profound  necessity  that  Christian  pa- 
rents, consciously  meaning  to  bring  up  their  children 
for  God,  should  make  a  thorough  inspection  of  their 
morality  itself,  to  find  if  there  be  any  bad  spot  in  it ; 
knowing  that,  as  certainly  as  there  is,  it  will  more  or 
less  fatally  corrupt  their  children. 

We  have  still  another  whole  class  of  disqualifications 
to  speak  of,  that  belong,  as  vices,  to  the  Christian  life 
itself,  and  will,  as  much  more  certainly,  be  ruinous  in 
their  effects.  Some  of  them  would  never  be  thought 
of  as  disqualifications  for  the  Christian  training  of  chil- 
dren, and  yet  they  are  so,  in  a  degree  to  even  cut  off 
the  reasonable  hope  of  success.  Probably  a  great  part 
of  the  cases  of  disaster,  that  occur  in  the  training  of 
Christian  families,  are  referable  to  these  Christian  vices, 
which  are  commonly  not  put  down  as  evidences  of 
apostasy,  or  any  radical  defect  of  Christian  principle, 
because  they  are  not  supposed  to  imply  a  discontinu- 
ance of  prayer,  or  a  fatal  subjection  to  the  spirit  of  this 
world. 


PARENTAL    QUALIFICATIONS.  263 

Sanctimony,  for  example,  as  we  commonly  use  the 
term,  is  one  of  these  vices.  It  describes  what  we  con- 
ceive to  be  a  saintly,  or  over-saintly  air  and  manner, 
when  there  is  a  much  inferior  degree  of  sanctity  in  the 
life.  There  is  no  hypocrisy  in  it,  for  there  is  no  inten- 
tion to  deceive ;  but  there  is  a  legal,  austere,  conscien- 
tiousness, which  keeps  on  all  the  solemnities  and  longi- 
tudes of  expression,  just  because  there  is  too  little  of 
God's  love  and  joy  in  the  feeling,  to  play  in  the  smiles 
of  gladness  and  liberty.  Now  it  is  the  little  child's 
way,  to  get  his  first  lessons  from  the  looks  and  faces 
round  him.  And  what  can  be  worse,  or  do  more  to 
set  him  off  from  all  piety,  by  a  fixed  aversion,  than  to 
have  gotten  such  impressions  of  it  only,  as  he  takes 
from  this  always  unblessed,  tedious,  look  of  sanctimony. 
What  can  a  poor  child  do,  when  the  sense  of  nature 
and  natural  life,  the  smiles,  glad  voices,  and  cheerful 
notes  of  play,  are  all  overcast  and  gloomed,  or,  as  it 
were,  forbidden,  by  that  ghostly  piety  in  which  it  is 
itself  being  brought  up  ?  And  yet  the  world  will  won- 
der immensely  at  the  strange  perversity  of  the  child 
that  grows  up  under  such  a  saintly  training,  to  be 
known  as  a  person  mortally  averse  to  religion  !  Why, 
it  would  be  a  much  greater  wonder  if  he  could  think 
of  it  even  with  patience ! 

Bigotry  is  another  of  these  Christian  vices,  and  yet 
no  one  will  assume  his  infallible  capacity,  in  the  matter 
of  Christian  training,  as  confidently  as  the  bigot.  Has 
he  not  the  truth?  is  he  not  opposite,  as  possible,  to 
all  error?   has  any  man   a  greater  abhorrence  of  all 


264  PARENTAL    QUALIFICATIONS. 

laxity  and  all  variation  from  the  standards  ?  Is  he  not 
in  a  way  of  speaking  out  always,  and  giving  faithful 
testimonies  in  his  house  ?  Yes,  that  must  be  admitted ; 
and  yet  he  is  a  man  that  mauls  every  truth  of  God,  and 
every  gentle  and  lovely  feeling  of  a  genuinely  Chris- 
tian character.  His  intensities  are  made  by  his  nar- 
rowness and  hate,  and  not  by  his  love.  He  fills  the 
house  with  a  noise  of  piety,  and  may  dog  his  children 
possibly  into  some  kind  of  conformity  with  his  opin- 
ions. But  he  is  much  more  likely,  by  this  brassy  din, 
to  only  stun  their  intelligence  and  make  them  incapable 
of  any  true  religious  impressions.  There  is  no  class  of 
children  that  turn  out  worse,  in  general,  than  the  chil- 
dren of  the  Christian  bigots. 

The  vice  of  Christian  fanaticism  operates,  in  another 
and  different  way,  but  with  a  commonly  disastrous 
effect.  The  fanatic  is  a  man  who  mixes  false  fire  with 
the  true,  and  burns  with  a  partly  diabolical  heat.  He 
means  to  be  superlatively  Christian,  but  it  happens  that 
what  he  gets,  above  others,  is  the  addition  of  something 
to  his  passions,  which  would  be  more  genuine,  if  it 
were  in  his  affections.  He  scorches,  but  never  melts. 
He  is  most  impatient  of  what  is  ordinary  and  common, 
and  does  not  sufficiently  honor  the  solid  works  and  ex- 
periences of  that  goodness  which  is  fixed  and  faithful. 
This  kind  of  character  makes  a  fiery  element  for  child- 
ish piety  to  grow  in.  "What  can  the  child  become,  or 
learn  to  be,  where  every  thing  is  in  this  key  of  excess  ? 
It  is  as  if  there  were  a  simoon  of  piety  blowing  through 
the  house,  and  it  dries  away  all  gentle  longings  and 


PARENTAL    QUALIFICATIONS.  265 

holiest  sympathies  of  the  child's  affectionate  nature,  so 
that  all  attractions  God- ward  are  suspended.  A  certain 
violence  and  harshness  in  the  parental  fanaticism, 
wakens  often  the  sense  of  injustice  too,  or  hate,  and 
makes  the  superlative  piety  appear  to  be  no  better, 
after  all,  than  it  might  be. 

Another  Christian  vice  is  created  by  a  censorious 
habit.  Not  by  that  habit  of  judging  and  condemning, 
which  takes  a  pleasure  in  condemnation  itself — that  is 
the  vice  of  a  Christless  character,  not  of  a  Christian — 
but  there  is  a  large  class  of  disciples  who  think  it  a 
kind  of  duty,  and  a  just  acknowledgment  of  the  fact 
of  human  depravity,  to  be  seeing  always  dark  things. 
They  judge  evil  judgments  because  they  will  be  more 
faithful,  and  will  be  only  doing  to  others  just  as  they 
do  to  themselves.  This  habit  is  like  a  poisonous  atmos- 
phere in  the  house.  It  kills  all  springing  sentiments 
of  confidence  and  esteem.  That  charity  which  believ- 
eth  all  things,  and  hopeth  all  things,  appears  to  be 
already  stifled  in  it.  What  shall  a  child  aspire  to,  when 
there  is  no  really  estimable  growth,  and  good,  and 
beauty,  any  where  ? 

It  is  a  great  vice  also,  as  regards  the  Christian  train- 
ing of  a  family,  that  there  is  a  habit  in  the  parents  of 
receiving  nothing  by  authority,  and  really  disowning 
authority  in  all  matters  of  religious.  God  reigns  him- 
self by  authority,  and  because  he  is  God ;  and  parents 
are  to  govern  by  authority,  partly,  in  the  same  manner. 
If  the  parent  is  a  debater  with  God  in  every  thing,  say- 
ing always  No,  to  God,  till  he  has  gotten  his  proofs,  the 

23 


266  PARENTAL     QUALIFICATIONS. 

spirit  will  go  through  the  house.  The  children  will 
demand  a  reason  for  every  thing  required,  and  will  put 
the  parents  always  on  trial,  instead  of  being  put  under 
authority  themselves.  Kothing  breaks  down  faster  the 
religious  conscience,  or  untones  more  completely  the 
divine  afiinities  of  the  childish  nature,  than  to  have  lost 
the  feeling,  ceased  to  hear  the  ring,  of  authority.  Abra- 
ham couM  believe  God's  words,  and  so  it  was  in  him  to 
command  his  children  after  him. 

Anxiousness  is  another  infirmity,  or  vice  of  charac* 
acter,  that  has  always  a  noxious  effect  in  the  training 
of  Christian  families.  Where  there  is  but  a  little  faith, 
there  is  apt  to  be  great  anxiousness.  And  nothing  will 
so  dreadfully  torment  the  life  of  a  child,  as  to  be  per- 
petually teased  by  the  anxious  words  and  looks  and  in- 
terferences of  this  unhappy  superintendcDce.  And  if 
the  pretext  given  is  a  concern  for  the  child's  piety,  the 
effect  is  only  so  much  more  disastrous.  What  can  he 
think  of  piety,  when  it  has  only  worried  him  at  every 
play  and  every  natural  pleasure  of  his  life  ?  Just  con- 
trary to  this  feeble,  half-believing,  half-Christian  vice 
of  anxiety,  the  parental  habit  should  be  one  of  confi- 
dence ;  gladdened  always  in  the  faith  that  God  is  the 
child's  covenanted  keeper,  and  will  never  fail  to  guard 
the  trust  that  is  faithfully  committed  to  his  hands,  never 
allow  to  grow  up  in  sin  what  parental  fidelity  is  train- 
ing, by  all  reasonable  diligence,  for  a  godly  life. 

This  enumeration  of  the  moral  and  religious  vices, 
that  spot  the  beauty  and  mar  the  completeness  of  char- 


PARENTAL    QUALIFICATIONS.  267 

acter,  in  one  way  or  another,  of  almost  all  merely  ordi- 
nary Christians,  could  be  indefinitely  extended.  Noth- 
ing, in  fact,  is  farther  off,  generally,  from  the  truth,  than 
the  assumption,  by  nominally  Christian  parents,  of  their 
sufficiency,  or  their  properly  qualified  state,  as  regards 
the  training  of  their  children.  They  are  almost  all  dis- 
qualified, or  under-qualified,  to  such  a  degree  to  make 
their  work  perilous,  and  as  ought  to  fill  them  with  real 
concern  for  their  success.  What  are  we  all,  in  the 
merely  initial  state  of  Christian  living,  but  diseased  pa- 
tients, just  entered  into  hospital?  We  are  not  all  in 
the  same  sort  of  weakness  and  defect,  but  all  weak  and 
defective — one-sided,  passionate,  broken  in  principle, 
corrupted  by  mixed  motive,  lame  in  faith.  How  foolish 
then  is  it  for  us  to  be  assuming  that,  because  we  have 
come  to  Christ  and  begun  to  be  disciples,  we  are  ready, 
of  course,  for  the  holy  nurture  and  safe  ordering  of  our 
families.  How  foolish,  also,  to  be  wondering,  as  we  so 
often  do,  that  the  children  of  one  or  another  Christian, 
or  reputedly  good  Christian  fiamily,  turn  out  so  ill — 
as  if  it  were  some  evidence  of  a  singularly  perverse  and 
reprobate  nature  in  such  children.  Little  do  we  know 
what  subtle  poisons  were  hid  in  what  we  took  to  be  the 
good  Christian  piety  of  those  families.  After  all,  it 
may  have  been  much  less  good,  or  more  exceptionably 
good,  than  we  thought. 

It  may  occur  to  some  of  you,  as  a  discouraging  dis- 
advantage, that,  where  one  parent  is  duly  qualified  for 
the  training  of  the  children  in  piety,  the  other  is  not, 
but  is  in  fact,  a  real  hindrance  to  the  right  and  safe  pro- 


268  PARENTAL    QUALIFICATIONS. 

ceeding  of  tlie  endeavor.  The  parents  are  never  equally 
well  qualified ;  and  one,  or  the  other  of  them,  is  likely 
to  be  a  good  deal  out  of  line,  in  some  kind  of  personal 
defect,  or  obliquity  of  practice.  Sometimes  one  of 
them  will  be  a  purely  worldly-minded  person,  or  an 
unbeliever,  or,  it  may  be,  even  fatally  corrupted  by 
vicious  habits.  There  is,  accordingly,  no  hope  of  concert 
in  the  endeavor  to  train  the  children  up  in  piety.  And 
this,  the  other  party,  who  is  more  commonly  the  mother, 
may  be  tempted  in  some  hour  of  discouragement  to 
think,  amounts  to  a  fatal  disqualification,  such  as  quite 
takes  away  the  rational  confidence  of  success.  Let  me 
come  to  her  aid,  in  the  assurance  that  God  connects 
Himself  even  the  more  certainly  with  one  party,  if  only 
there  is,  in  that  one,  a  believing  and  truly  faithful 
spirit,  prepared  for  the  work.  He  pledges  himself  in 
formal  promise  to  one  party,  in  all  such  conditions, 
declaring  that  the  believing  wife  sanctifies,  takes  away 
the  defect  of,  the  unbelieving  husband.  Let  her  also 
consider  what  is  said  of  young  Timothy — how  the 
apostle  figures  the  faith  of  the  good  grandmother,  and 
her  daughter  the  good  mother,  descending  on  Timothy 
in  the  third  generation,  when  his  father,  all  this  time, 
was  a  Greek,  probably  an  unbeliever  and  idolater. 
There  was  not  force  enough,  you  perceive,  in  all  that 
father's  influence  to  break  the  descent  of  the  faith  of 
these  two  godly  mothers  upon  his  son. 

This,  then,  is  the  conclusion  to  which  we  are  brought ; 
that  qualifications  are  wanted  for  this  work  as  for  almost 
no  other,  and  that  where  they  are  really  had,  if  it  be 


PARENTAL    QUALIFICATIONS.  269 

only  by  one  party,  they  are  not  likely  to  fail.  But 
how  shall  they  be  obtained  ?  that  is  the  question.  Who 
is  subtle  enough  to  go  through  this  hunt  of  the  charac- 
ter, and  actually  find  every  loose  joint  of  morality  in 
his  practice,  every  vice  of  defect,  or  distemper,  in 
in  his  Christian  life  ?  No  one,  I  answer — that  is  impos- 
sible. N"o  weeding  process,  carried  on  by  ourselves, 
ever  did  or  can  extirpate  our  evils.  The  only  true 
method  here  is  the  method  of  faith ;  to  be  more  per- 
fectly and  wholly  trusted  to  God,  more  singly,  simply 
Christian.  God's  touch  in  us  can  feel  out  every  thing ; 
every  most  subtle  spot  of  wrong  or  weakness  he  can 
heal.  The  reason  why  we  have  so  many  of  these  spots 
and  disqualifying  vices  is,  that  we  are  only  a  little 
Christian.  Whereas,  if  we  could  be  fully  entered  into 
Christ's  keeping,  and  have  our  whole  consciousness 
overspread  and  clothed  by  his  righteousness,  we  should 
live,  in  every  part,  and  be  kept  in  holy  equilibrium 
above  our  defects  and  disorders,  all  the  time.  Put  ye 
on  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  then  as  a  complete  investiture, 
and  there  will  be  no  poison  flowing  down  upon  your 
children,  from  any  thing  in  your  life  and  example.  If 
Christ  is  made,  to  those  who  trust  in  him,  wisdom, 
righteousness,  sanctification,  and  redemption,  what  is 
there  that  he  can  not  and  will  not  be  made  ?  Wonder- 
ful is  the  completeness  of  any  soul  that  is  complete 
in  him.  How  pure  and  perfect  the  morality,  how 
wise  the  discretion,  how  gentle  and  full,  and  free,  the 
life  in  which  he  lives !  The  house  and  its  discipline 
become  a  most  joyous  element  to  children,  when  thus 

23* 


270  PARENTAL    QUALIFICATIONS. 

administered.  Every  thing  good  in  it  is  welcome,  even 
tlie  restraints  and  supervisions ;  for  they  have  a  general 
air  of  confidence  and  hope  and  gentle  feeling,  that  wins 
and  not  repels.  Even  authority  itself  is  welcome,  be- 
cause it  is  enforced  by  character,  and  not  by  tones  of 
violence,  or  dictatorial  airs  of  heat  and  menace.  Who- 
ever comes  thus  into  God's  full  love,  to  be  in  it  and  of 
it,  has  a  true  equipment  for  the  family  administration. 
If  it  can  be  said — Herein  is  Love,  what  else  can  really 
be  wanting?  This  bond  of  perfectness,  brings  all 
needed  qualifications  with  it,  so  that  when  the  love  or 
the  faith  working  by  it,  really  reigns  and  tempers  the 
man  by  its  impulse,  it  can  truly  be  said,  as  of  Abra- 
ham— For  I  know  him,  that  he  will  command  his  chil- 
dren and  his  household  after  him,  and  they  shall  keep 
the  way  of  the  Lord. 


III. 

PHYSICAL  NURTURE,  TO  BE  A  MEANS  OF 

GRACE. 

"  Feed  me  with  feed  convenient  for  me,  lest  I  be  full  and  deny  thee, 
and  say,  who  is  the  Lord?" — Proverbs,  xxx.  8-9. 

A  MOST  fit  subject  of  prayer !  And  if  the  feeding 
of  an  adult  person,  such  as  Agur,  has  a  connection  so 
intimate  with  his  religious  life  and  character,  how 
much  more  the  feeding  and  the  physical  nurture  of  a 
child.  I  use  the  text,  therefore,  to  introduce,  for  our 
present  consideration,  as  a  kind  of  first  point,  the  food 
or  feeding  of  children,  and  their  physical  treatment 
generally. 

It  will  not  be  incredible  to  any  thoughtful  person, 
least  of  all  to  any  genuinely  philosophic  person,  that 
the  treatment  and  fare  of  the  body  has  much  to  do  with 
the  quality  of  the  soul,  or  mind — its  affinities,  passions, 
aspirations,  tempers ;  its  powers  of  thought  and  senti- 
ment, its  imaginations,  its  moral  and  religions  develop- 
ment. For  the  body  is  not  only  a  house  to  the  mind 
as  other  houses  are,  which  we  may  live  in  for  a  time 
with  no  perceptible  effect  on  our  character,  but  it  is  a 
house  in  the  sense  of  being  the  mind's  own  organ ;  its 
external  life  itself,  the  medium  of  all  its  action,  the  in- 
strument of   its  thought   and  feeling,  the  inlet   also 


272  PHYSICAL    NURTURE 

of  all  its  knowledges  and  impressions,  and  the  instiga- 
tor, by  a  thousand  reactions,  of  all  sucli  spiritual  riot 
and  corruption  as  have  had  their  leaven  brewed  in  as 
many  physical  abuses  and  disorders.  So  intimate  is 
this  connection  of  mind  and  body,  so  very  close  to  real 
oneness  are  they,  that  no  one  can,  by  any  possibility, 
be  a  Christian  in  his  mind,  and  not  be  in  some  sense  a 
Christian  in  his  body.  If  his  soul  is  to  be  a  temple  of 
the  Holy  Ghost,  then  his  body  must  be.  If  his  soul  is 
under  government,  then  his  body  will  be.  And  if  his 
body  is  not  under  government,  then  his  soul,  by  no 
possibility,  can  be ;  save  that,  in  every  such  case,  it 
will  and  must  be  under  the  government  of  the  body ; 
subject  to  its  power,  swayed  by  all  its  excesses  and 
distempers. 

Hence  that  most  determined,  almost  proud,  resolve 
of  the  apostle,  when  he  declares — "I  will  not  be 
brought  under  the  power  of  any."  Under  the  body  ? 
ISTo !  he  will  scorn  that  low  kind  of  thraldom.  Meats, 
drinks,  appetites — none  of  these  shall  have  the  mastery 
in  him.  He  will  assert  the  supreme  right  of  the  soul 
or  person,  above  the  house  it  lives  in ;  so  God's  pre- 
eminent right  in  the  soul.  He  will  say  to  the  body — 
"stay  thou  down  there" — as  they  that  fast  do,  in  fast- 
ing ;  and,  what  is  more  profoundly,  more  scientifically 
rational  than  fasting,  when  it  is  practiced  in  the  real 
insight  of  its  reasons?  It  is  the  soul  rising  up,  in 
God's  name,  to  assert  herself  over  the  body ;  over  its 
appetites,  passions,  tempers,  and,  if  possible,  distempers. 
And  how  often  the  poor,  coarse,  stupid,  sensual,  fast- 


TO    BE    A    MEANS    OF    GRACE.  273 

bound  slaves  of  the  body,  calling  tbemselves  disciples, 
need  this  kind  of  war,  and  a  regular  campaign  of  it,  to  get 
their  souls  uppermost  and  trim  themselves  for  the  race. 

One  must  be  a  very  inobservant  person,  not  to  have 
noticed,  that  all  his  finest  and  most  God-ward  aspira- 
tions are  smothered  under  any  load  of  excess,  or  over- 
indulgence. It  is  as  if  the  body  were  calling  down  all 
the  other  powers,  even  those  of  poetry,  magnanimity, 
and  religion,  to  help  it  do  the  scarcely  possible  work 
of  digestion.  At  that  point  they  gather.  The  sense  of 
beauty  is  there,  and  the  soul's  angel  of  hope,  and  the 
testimony  of  God's  peace,  and  the  music  of  devotion, 
and  the  thrill  of  sermons,  dosing,  all  together,  and  sough- 
ing in  dull  dreams  round  the  cargo  of  poppies  in  the 
hold  of  the  body.  To  raise  any  fresh  sentiment  is  now 
impossible.  Even  prayer  itself  is  mired,  and  can  not 
struggle  out.  The  news  of  some  best  friend's  death 
can  only  be  answered  by  dry  interjections,  and  forced 
postures  of  grief,  that  will  not  find  their  meaning  till 
to-morrow. 

And  much  the  same  thing  holds  true,  only  under  a 
different  form,  when  the  body  is  prematurely  diseased 
and  broken,  by  the  excesses  of  self-indulgence.  Its 
distempers  will  distemper  the  higher  nature ;  its  pains 
prick  through  into  the  sensibilities,  even  of  the  spiritual 
nature.  Out  of  the  pits  of  the  body,  dark  clouds  will 
steam  up  into  the  chambers  of  the  soul,  and  all  the 
devils  of  dyspepsia  will  be  hovering  in  them,  to  scare 
away  its  peace,  and  choke  the  godlike  possibilities,  out 
of  which  its  better  motions  should  be  springing. 


274  PHYSICAL    NURTURE 

So  important  a  thing,  for  tlie  religious  life  of  the 
soul,  is  tlie  feeding  of  the  body.  Vast  multitudes  of 
disciples  have  no  conception  of  the  fact.  Living  in 
a  swine's  body,  regularly  over -loaded  and  oppressed 
every  day  of  their  lives,  they  wonder  that  so  great  dif- 
ficulties and  discouragements  rise  up  to  hinder  the 
Christian  clearness  of  their  soul.  Could  they  but  look 
into  Agur's  prayer,  and  take  the  meaning — feed  me 
with  food  convenient  for  me,  lest  I  be  full,  and  deny 
thee,  and  say,  who  is  the  Lord  ? — they  would  find  a 
real  gospel  in  it.  And  making  it  truly  their  own, 
they  would  dismiss,  at  once,  whole  armies  of  doubts ; 
their  faith  would  get  wings  to  rise ;  they  would  rest 
their  soul  in  an  element  of  power,  and  peace,  and  sweet- 
ness, and  would  run  the  way  of  God's  commandments 
with  a  wonderful  clearness  and  liberty. 

I  have  spoken,  thus  briefly,  to  a  fact  of  adult  expe- 
rience, because  it  is  adult  conviction  which  my  subject 
needs  to  obtain.  To  simply  look  on  children  from 
without,  and  tell  what  effects  will  be  wrought  on  their 
religious  tempers  and  habit  by  their  feeding,  and  the 
general  nurture  of  their  body,  will  not  carry  any  depth 
of  conviction  by  itself;  for  there  is  no  creature  of  Grod 
less  adequately  understood,  or  conceived,  than  a  child. 
And  therefore  it  is  that  I  appeal  to  parents,  in  this 
manner,  requiring  them  to  make  some  observation  of 
themselves  ;  to  notice  what  becomes  of  them,  and  their 
sentiments,  and  senses  of  Christ  and  of  God,  when  they 
are  down  under  the  burdens  of  an  overloaded,  or  per- 
manently diseased  body. 


TO    BE    A    MEANS     OF    GRACE.  275 

The  principle  I  am  liere  asserting,  as  regards  the  re- 
ligious import  of  feeding  and  bodily  nurture,  in  the  case 
of  children,  is  the  same  on  which  the  child  Daniel  and 
his  friends  acted,  in  the  choice  of  their  very  simple  and 
temperate  diet.  Whether  Daniel  had  been  brought  up 
from  his  infancy  in  this  manner  does  not  appear.  He 
may  have  been  prompted  to  this  choice,  by  a  purely 
divine  impulse.  But  whether  he  came  into  it  by  one 
method  or  the  other,  makes  little  difference;  for,  in 
either  case,  the  most  important  matter  is  to  observe  the 
result,  and  that  such  kind  of  feeding  was  chosen,  or  in- 
stituted, for  the  sake  of  the  result  that  would  follow, 
on  perfectly  natural  principles,  viz:  to  give  greater 
clearness  to  the  religious  perceptions  and  sentiments  of 
the  soul.  The  body  grew  toward  perfect  health,  be- 
cause it  was  burdened  and  distempered  by  no  excesses. 
And  the  soul  was  just  as  much  more  open  to  God  and 
the  sense  of  unseen  things,  as  the  body  was  more 
serenely  and  blissfully  well,  in  its  physical  condition. 
In  this  manner  the  child's  nature  grew  apace,  in  the 
molds  of  a  perfectly  evened  judgment,  and  was  also 
wonderfully  opened  to  God  and  all  highest  discoveries 
of  his  will.  In  a  certain  sense,  he  became  a  great 
prophet  by  his  physical  nurture — "God  gave  him  knowl- 
edge, thus,  and  skill,  in  all  learning  and  wisdom,  and 
he  had  understanding  in  all  visions  and  dreams."  His 
feeding  stood  with  his  health,  and  with  all  purest  affin- 
ities and  deepest  openings  toward  God. 

Let  us  glance  a  moment,  now,  at  some  of  the  points 


276  PHYSICAL    NURTURE 

here  involved,  and  distinguish,  if  we  can,  the  results 
that  are  always  depending  on  the  right  feeding  of 
children. 

The  child  is  taken,  when  his  training  begins,  in  a 
state  of  naturalness,  as  respects  all  the  bodily  tastes  and 
tempers,  and  the  endeavor  should  be  to  keep  him  in 
that  key ;  to  let  no  stimulation  of  excess,  or  delicacy, 
disturb  the  simplicity  of  nature,  and  no  sensual  pleas- 
uring, in  the  name  of  food,  become  a  want  or  expecta- 
tion of  his  appetite.  Any  artificial  appetite  begun,  is 
the  beginning  of  distemper,  disease,  and  a  general  dis- 
turbance of  natural  proportion.  Intemperance!  the 
woes  of  intemperate  drink !  how  dismal  the  story,  when 
it  is  told ;  how  dreadful  the  picture,  when  we  look 
upon  it.  From  what  do  the  father  and  mother  recoil, 
with  a  greater  and  more  total  horror  of  feeling,  than 
the  possibility  that  their  child  is  to  be  a  drunkard? 
Little  do  they  remember  that  he  can  be,  even  before  he 
has  so  much  as  tasted  the  cup;  and  that  they  them- 
selves can  make  him  so,  virtually,  without  meaning  it, 
even  before  he  has  gotten  his  language !  Nine-tenths 
of  the  intemperate  drinking  begins,  not  in  grief  and 
destitution,  as  we  so  often  hear,  but  in  vicious  feeding. 
Here  the  scale  of  order  and  simplicity  is  first  broken, 
and  then  what  shall  a  distempered  or  distemperate  life 
run  to,  more  certainly,  than  to  what  is  intemperate? 
False  feeding  genders  false  appetite,  and  when  the  soul 
is  burning,  all  through,  in  the  fires  of  false  appetite, 
what  is  that  but  a  universal  uneasiness  ?  and  what  will 
this  uneasiness  more  naturally  do,  than  betake  itself  to 


TO    BE    A    MEANS    OF    GRACE.  277 

the  pleasurable  excitement  of  drink  ?  What  is  wanted 
is  a  sensation — the  soul  is  aching  for  a  sensation ;  for 
it  is  one  of  the  miseries  of  food  that  the  tasting  pleas- 
ure is  soon  over  and  the  cloj'^ed  body  turns  away  in  dis- 
gust ;  one  of  the  excellencies  of  drink,  that  the  sensa- 
tion is  a  long  one,  and  may  be  easily  drawn  out  so  as 
to  cover  whole  hours  of  duration.  Food,  sleep,  friends, 
the  self-enjoyment  of  character — what  an  excellent  and 
easy  substitute  it  is  for  them  all !  Thus,  for  example, 
when  a  very  young  child,  taken  by  the  captivating 
flavor  of  some  dainty  or  confectionery,  has  refused 
to  restrain  itself,  and  has  kept  on,  as  by  a  kind  of  spell, 
repeating  the  sensation  again  and  again,  till  the  organs, 
dried  and  cloyed  by  excess,  refuse  to  give  it  longer, 
you  will  see  that  a  wonderful  uneasiness  follows,  ask- 
ing what  sensation  next  ?  and  really  there  is  nothing 
that  can  till  the  vacant  space,  or  quiet  the  uneasiness. 
One  toy  or  another  will  be  seized  and  thrown  into  the 
fire.  The  plays  that  before  satisfied  look  insipid  and 
do  not  please.  The  world  goes  ill  because  there  is 
nothing  good  enough  in  it,  and  a  general  cry  finishes 
the  overdone  pleasure  of  the  day.  And  here  you  have 
in  small,  as  in  a  single  view,  just  that  misery  of  distem- 
per and  uneasiness  which  is  wrought,  by  the  bad  feed- 
ing of  childhood,  and  prepares  the  vice  of  intemper- 
ance, even  before  it  appears. 

It  is  only  a  larger  and  more  comprehensive  mischief 
of  the  wrong  feeding  of  children,  that  it  puts  them 
under  the  body,  teaches  them  to  value  bodily  sensa- 
tions, makes  them  sensual  every  way,  and  sets  them 


278  PHYSICAL    NURTURE 

lusting  in  every  kind  of  excess.  The  vice  of  impurity 
is  taught,  how  commonly,  thus,  at  the  mother's  table. 
The  finer  sentiments  and  wits  of  children  are  smoth- 
ered also  and  deadened,  by  this  same  anim^alizing  pro- 
cess. They  make  a  dull  figure  at  school.  Their  feel- 
ing is  coarse,  their  conscience  weak,  their  passions  low 
and  violent.  Their  higher  af&nities,  those  which  ally 
them  to  God  and  character  and  unseen  worlds,  appear 
to  be  closed  up,  and  the  lines  of  their  faces,  particu- 
larly about  the  mouth,  give  a  low  sensual  expression, 
even  when  the  upper-head  is  large  and  full.  A  certain 
degree  of  selfishness  is  likely  to  be  somehow  developed 
in  children,  for  sin  of  every  kind  is  selfish,  but  the 
lowest,  meanest,  and  most  utterly  degraded  type  of 
selfishness,  is  the  sensual ;  that  which  centers  in  the 
body,  and  makes  every  thing  bend  to  bodily  sensation. 
And  yet  the  early  feeding  and  growth  of  children 
tends,  how  often,  to  just  this  and  nothing  higher.  Say- 
ing nothing  of  genius  and  great  action,  impossible  to 
be  developed  in  this  manner  out  of  the  finest  possible 
organization,  what  hope  is  there  under  such  abuse  of 
nature,  that  religion  will  there  begin  to  loosen  her 
noble  aspirations,  and  claim  her  sonship  with  God? 
What  place  can  the  love  of  God  find  open,  in  a  soul 
that  is  shut  up  under  the  bruitishness  of  sensuality  ? 
What  sensibility  is  left  for  Christ  and  God,  when  the 
body  has  become  the  total  manhood  ? 

And  exactly  this  it  will  most  certainly  be,  if  first  it 
becomes  the  total  childhood.  We  have  a  way  of  say- 
ing,  continually,   that  children  are  creatures  of   the 


TO    BE    A    MEANS    OF    GRACE  279 

senses,  and  we  please  ourselves  in  making  allowances 
for  them  in  this  manner,  and  raising  expectations  of 
them  that  suppose  the  likelihood  of  their,  by-and-bye, 
coming  out  of  their  senses,  into  the  higher  ranges  of 
thought  and  spiritual  impulse.  But  we  do  not  remem- 
ber, always,  the  immense  distinction  between  being  in 
the  senses  and  being  in  the  sensualities ;  between  going- 
after  the  eyes,  and  going  after  the  stomach ;  between  the 
almost  divine  curiosity  of  intelligence,  exploring  all 
objects,  sounds,  and  colors,  to  get  in  the  stock  of  its 
mental  furniture,  and  the  totally  incurious  hankering  of 
appetite,  for  some  finer,  freer  indulgence  of  the  animal 
sensation.  Little  hope  is  there  of  a  child,  who  is  in  the 
senses,  after  this  latter  fashion.  This  he  will  quite  sel- 
dom or  never  outgrow ;  on  the  contrary,  it  will  over- 
grow him,  and  subjugate  all  nobler  impulse  in  him,  by 
a  kind  of  natural  law ;  even  as  disease  propagates  more 
disease  and  not  health.  In  this  manner,  a  child  can  be 
fairly  put  under  the  body  for  life,  by  the  time  he  is  five 
years  old.  And  just  this,  I  verily  believe,  is  often  true. 
Kindness,  it  may  be,  has  done  it,  but  it  is  that  kindness 
which  is  better  called  cruelty.  Coarseness  of  feeling, 
lowness  of  impulse,  gluttony,  dissipation,  drunkenness, 
adultery — all  foul  passions  that  kennel  in  a  sensual 
soul,  it  has  cherished  as  a  foster-mother ;  not  once  imag- 
ining the  fact,  in  the  indiscreet  feeding  of  the  hapless 
creature  trusted  to  its  care. 

This,  too,  will  be  rendered  yet  more  probable  by 
reviewing,  briefly,  some  of  the  methods  by  which  a 


280  PHYSICAL    NUKTURE 

more    judicious,  and  more  properly  Christian  feeding 
will  conduce  toward  a  different  and  happier  result. 

First  of  all,  it  will  not  be  a  permitted  practice,  to 
quiet  the  child  in  states  of  irritation,  or  stop  it  in  cry- 
ing, or  pacify  it  in  fits  of  ill-nature,  by  dainties  that 
please  the  taste.  What  is  this  but  a  schooling  and 
drawing  out  of  sensation,  by  making  it  the  reward  of 
just  that  which  is  most  totally  opposite  to  self-govern- 
ment ?  It  must  be  a  very  dull  child  that  will  not  cry 
and  fret  a  great  deal,  when  it  is  so  pleasantly  rewarded. 
Trained,  in  this  manner,  to  play  ill-nature  for  sensation's 
sake,  it  will  go  on  rapidly,  in  the  course  of  double  attain- 
ment, and  will  be  very  soon  perfected,  in  the  double 
character  of  an  ill-natured,  morbid,  sensualist,  and  a 
feigning  cheat  beside.  By  what  method,  or  means, 
can  the  great  themes  of  God  and  religion  get  hold  of  a 
soul,  that  has  learned  to  be  governed  only  by  rewards 
of  sensation,  paid  to  affectations  of  grief  and  deliberate 
actings  of  ill-nature? 

Simplicity  also,  as  opposed  to  luxuries,  condiments, 
and  confections,  is  a  condition  of  all  right  feeding  for 
infancy  and  childhood,  which  ought  to  approve  itself 
to  the  most  ordinary  measure  of  parental  discretion. 
Of  course  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  the  child  is 
never  to  have  his  holiday  feast — that  would  be 
to  cut  him  off  from  another  kind  of  benefit — I  only 
insist  that  he  is  not  to  have  a  perpetual  holiday, 
and  be  stimulated  by  continual  flavors  on  his  or- 
gans, till  the  beautiful  simplicity  of  his  appetite  is 
gone  and  nothing  pleases  longer,  but  that  which  is  in- 


TO    BE    A    MEANS    OF    GRACE.  281 

tense  enough  to  be  rather  poison  than  food.  Coffee,  for 
example — what  can  be  worse  for  a  child's  body,  or  his 
future  character,  than  to  be  dosed  every  morning  with 
his  cup  of  coffee  ?  No  matter  if  he  cries  for  it,  all  the 
worse  if  he  does ;  for  it  shows  that  he  has  been  already 
taught  to  love  it,  and  is  so  far  taken  away,  prematurely, 
from  the  natural  simplicity  of  his  tastes.  And  how  is 
the  child  going  to  be  drawn  by  the  beauty  of  God,  and 
the  sacred  pleasures  of  God's  friendship,  when  thinking 
always  of  the  dainties  he  has  had,  or  is  again  to  have, 
and  counting  it  always  the  main  blessing  of  existence, 
to  have  his  body  seasoned  by  the  flavors  of  sensation  ? 
Instead  of  praying,  as  possibly  he  may  be  taught,  in 
words — "Feed  me  with  food  convenient  for  me" — he 
prays,  in  fact,  from  morning  to  night,  with  all  diseased 
longings  and  hankerings,  to  be  fed,  in  the  exact  contrary, 
with  what  will  most  increase  his  already  overgrown 
sensuality.  In  a  manner  faithfully  characteristic  of  his 
low,  prudential  morality,  Paley  advises  that  all  chil- 
dren and  young  person  should  live  simply,  because  they 
are  now  susceptible  enough  to  relish  simple  things ;  in 
order  that,  as  their  tastes  grow  duller  with  advancing 
age,  they  may  allow  themselves  a  freer  indulgence  in 
the  stimulations  of  appetite,  and  may  so  maintain  the 
feeding  pleasures  to  the  last.  Counsel  not  to  be  ques- 
tioned, even  if  these  pleasures  were  the  chief  end  of  life 
itself.  We  are  only  disappointed  and  vexed  by  the 
lowness  of  it,  when  we  recall,  what  is  the  real  and  true 
penalty  of  youthful  indulgence,  that  it  takes  away  the 
possible  relish  of  truth,  duty,  and  religion,  and  makes 

24* 


282  PHYSICAL    NUETUEE 

the  soul  forever  inaccessible  to  these  noblest  powers  of 
character  and  blessedness. 

In  a  wise,  physical  nurture,  it  is  a  matter  of  great 
import  also  to  regulate  the  times  of  feeding.  For  this 
induces  the  sense  of  order,  which  is  closely  allied  to  a 
habit  of  self-government.  If  the  nursing  child  is  simply 
stuffed  to  its  last  limit,  at  any  and  all  hours,  then  it  is 
put  in  the  way,  not  of  intelligent  feeding,  which  is  in- 
terspaced by  rest,  but  of  always  being  filled  to  its  limit. 
The  feeding  must,  of  course,  be  as  much  more  frequent 
in  infancy  as  the  demands  of  a  more  rapid  consumption 
require,  but  there  should  be  times,  and  a  degree  of  order 
established,  as  soon  as  possible ;  otherwise  the  stuf&ng 
method  will  go  on  into  childhood,  and  boyhood,  and  by 
that  time  the  bodily  habit  is  in  total  disorder,  carrying 
the  tempers  and  general  character  with  it.  The  break- 
fast before  breakfast,  and  the  dinner  before  dinner,  and 
the  casual  snatching  and  feeding  at  all  hours  between, 
bring  the  child  to  the  table  with  a  scowl  upon  his  face, 
and  a  nervous,  morbid  look  of  disgust,  which  declare^ 
as  plainly  as  possible,  that  there  is  nothing  good  enough 
prepared  for  him ;  and,  quite  as  plainly,  that  he  is  a 
poor,  misgoverned  and  spoiled  child.  He  is  overtaken 
by  all  the  woes  of  sensuality,  and  yet  has  gotten  almost 
none  of  its  pleasures ;  for  he  is  always  kept,  by  his 
irregular,  ungoverned  feeding,  so  close  up  to  the  line  of 
possible  appetite,  that  peevishness  and  ill-nature  are  the 
spice  of  all  his  sensations,  and  his  body  and  soul  are  about 
equally  distempered  by  the  morbid  irritations  and  dys- 
peptic woes  that  have  come  upon  them.     What  a  prep- 


TO    BE    A    MEANS    OF    GKACE.  288 

aration  is  this  for  the  calm,  sweet,  thouglitful.  motives 
of  religion,  and  the  gentle  whispers  of  God's  truth  in 
the  heart ! 

It  should  also  be  understood  in  the  religious  training 
of  children,  how  great  mischiefs  are  likely  to  follow, 
when  much  is  made  of  the  pleasures  of  the  table.  If 
the  feeding  is  the  great  circumstance  of  the  house  and 
the  day,  if  the  discourse  turns  always  on  the  peculiar 
relish  of  this,  or  the  wonderful  delicacy  of  that,  and  the 
main  stress  of  life  in  general  on  the  bliss  of  good  living, 
it  will  not  much  avail,  that  the  parents  have  a  certain 
wish  to  see  their  children  grow  up  in  religion.  A 
stranger  falling  into  such  a  family,  will  be  amazed  to 
find  how  pervasive  and  spirit-like  this  most  unetherial, 
undiffusive  kind  of  bliss  may  be.  The  smack  of  appe- 
tite will  seem  to  be  in  the  atmosphere  of  the  house.  It 
will  be  as  if  the  gastric  nerve  of  the  family  were  be- 
come the  whole  brain.  A  certain  coarseness  of  feeling 
and  character  will  appear  in  every  thing.  The  grain 
will  be  coarse,  both  of  body  and  soul ;  and  the  general 
expression  of  manners,  faces,  and  voices,  will  be  such 
as  indicates  a  reduction  of  grade,  in  all  the  finer  im- 
pulses of  society,  intelligence,  and  duty.  The  family 
affections  themselves  will  seem  to  have  fallen  back,  to 
make  room  for  the  valued  bliss  of  the  appetites.  Ko 
matter  how  much  of  prayer  and  regular  church-going 
there  may  be  in  such  a  family,  the  child  brought  up  in 
it  has  a  most  sad  fortune  to  bear,  in  the  savoring  habit 
to  which  it  trains  him.  Kor  is  it  only  in  some  high 
conditioned  family,  where  wealth  is  steeping  itself  in 


284  PHYSICAL    NUKTURE 

luxury,  that  this  kind  of  woe  is  put  upon  children.  It 
quite  as  often  begins  at  the  coarse,  low  table  of  the  sen- 
sually minded  poor.  These  are  even  most  likely  of  all 
to  live,  and  teach  their  children  to  live,  for  what  they 
may  eat.  The  humble  Christian  mother,  it  may  be, 
having  no  luxuries  of  dress  and  show  to  give  her  chil- 
dren, makes  it  a  great  point  to  have  them  enjoy  the 
feeding  of  their  bodies ;  and  so,  instead  of  fining  them 
to  a  nobler  pleasure  in  the  virtues  of  frugality,  order, 
gentle  society,  and  good  action,  she  graduates  them  into 
just  that  coarsest  sensuality  which  is  the  bane  of  all 
character,  for  this  life  and  the  next. 

It  is  a  much  greater  point,  in  this  connection,  than  is 
commonly  supposed,  that  children  should  be  trained,  to 
good  manners  in  their  eating.  Good  manners  are  a 
kind  of  self-government  which  operates  continually  to 
keep  the  body  under,  and  hold  the  sensualizing  ten- 
dency of  food  in  check.  Animals  have  no  manners, 
and  the  higher  gift  of  manners  is  allowed  to  man,  to 
keep  him  from  the  coarseness  and  lowness  to  which  his 
animal  nature  would  otherwise  run.  In  this  view,  good 
manners  are  even  a  sort  of  first-stage  religion,  for  the 
reduction  of  the  body.  If  the  child  is  practiced  care- 
fully, at  his  food,  in  deferring  to  superiors  and  seniors  ; 
in  the  restraint  of  haste,  or  greediness ;  in  the  proprie- 
ties of  positions,  and  the  handsome  uses  of  tools ;  in 
the  limitation  of  his  feeding  by  his  wants,  and  a  good- 
natured  submission  to  restriction  when  restriction  is 
needed  for  his  good ;  he  will  not  grow  sensual  in  that 
manner,  but  his  mind  will  be  all  the  while  getting  sov- 


TO    BE    A    MEANS    OF    GRACE.  285 

ereignty  over  the  body.  Good  breeding  and  civility  are, 
in  this  view,  indispensable.  The  Christian  training  of  chil- 
dren, without  any  care  of  their  manners  in  these  respects, 
is  only  the  training,  in  fact,  of  barbarians  and  savages, 
in  the  houses  of  such  as  call  themselves  Christian  people. 
There  is  great  importance  also,  for  a  similar  reason, 
in  the  observance  of  a  Christian  blessing,  or  giving  of 
thanks  at  the  table.  The  mere  form,  taken  only  as  a  con- 
stantly recurring  acknowledgment  of  God  and  the  obliga- 
tions of  gratitude,  laid  on  the  family  by  his  goodness,  is  a 
matter  of  inestimable  value.  The  bare  recollection  of  a 
higher  nature  and  the  higher  meaning  of  life,  coupled  uni- 
formly thus  with  the  order  of  the  table,  qualifies  the  lower 
sensations,  and  raises  them  to  a  kind  of  spiritual  dignity. 
It  is  even  a  pitiful  figure,  in  this  view,  which  the  great 
Franklin  makes,  when,  with  so  little  show  of  philoso- 
phy, saying  nothing  of  Christian  reverence,  he  recites, 
in  a  manner  of  evident  pleasure,  the  wit  of  his  boy- 
hood :  asking  his  father,  at  the  packing  of  his  barrel  of 
meat,  why  he  did  not  say  grace  over  the  whole  barrel 
at  once,  and  save  the  necessity  of  so  many  repetitions  ? 
These  repetitions  are  the  very  things  most  wanted. 
They  compose  the  liturgy  of  the  table,  and  have  their 
value,  not  in  the  quantities  of  meat  they  season,  but  in 
the  seasoning  of  the  partakers  themselves,  by  so  many 
reiterations  of  their,  at  least,  formal  homage  and  grati- 
tude. At  the  same  time  there  should  be  much  care 
taken  to  make  these  blessings  of  the  table  more  than  a 
form ;  to  connect  a  real  and  felt  meaning  with  them, 
and  make  them  the  expression  of  a  living  and  true 


286  PHYSICAL    NURTURE 

gratitude  in  all  present.  Children  can  be  so  trained,  in 
this  matter,  as  even  to  miss  the  flavor  of  their  meat, 
when  no  blessing  is  upon  it.  What  then  can  be  ex- 
pected, in  a  Christian  family,  when  the  children  are  put 
to  their  food  with  no  such  recognition  of  God,  and 
have  their  faces  turned  downward  always  upon  it,  even 
as  if  they  were  animals  ?  Doubtless  the  blessing  may, 
too  often,  be  a  mere  form,  but  it  is  a  form  which,  apart 
from  any  conscious  glow  of  sentiment,  no  Christian 
family  can  afford  to  lose. 

Much  also  may  be  done  for  children,  by  associating 
subjects,  and  sentiments,  and  plans  of  practical  charity, 
with  the  blessings  and  pleasures  of  the  table.  To  do 
this  requires  no  very  ingenious  methods,  or  deeply 
studied  plans.  It  will  be  done  almost,  of  course,  if  the 
parents  themselves  are,  at  all,  given  to  such  things; 
for,  in  such  a  case,  they  can  hardly  fail  to  speak  of  the 
children  of  the  poor,  and  the  bitter  pains  and  pinings 
of  their  unsatisfied  hunger.  If  the  appetites  of  chil- 
dren are  eager  and  easily  turned  to  a  habit  of  sensu- 
ality, their  sympathies  also  are  quick,  and  their  compas- 
sions wonderfully  tender.  Let  these  last  be  called  into 
play,  and  kept  in  play,  as  they  may  be  always  by  a 
few  simple  words  of  charity,  and  proposed  acts  of 
bounty  to  the  children  of  want,  and  the  former,  the 
appetites,  will  become  incentives  even  habitually,  to 
what  is  noblest  in  feeling  and  remotest  from  a  properly 
sensual  character.  The  body  itself  becomes  the  inter- 
preter, in  such  a  case,  of  want,  and  offers  itself  duti- 
fully to  mercy,  to  be  used  as  its  organ. 


TO    BE    A    MEANS    OF    GRACE.  287 

Such,  are  a  few  of  the  suggestions  that  require  to  be 
noted  and  observed,  in  the  right  feeding  of  children. 
Others  will  occur  to  you  daily,  as  your  work  goes  on, 
if  only  you  are  really  awake  to  the  transcendent  im- 
portance of  the  subject.  Let  it  never  be  assumed,  for 
one  moment,  that  you  are  now  doing  nothing  and  can 
be  doing  nothing  for  your  children,  because  you  are 
only  feeding  their  bodies.  A  very  considerable  part  of 
your  parental  charge  lies  just  here ;  in  giving  your  chil- 
dren such  a  nurture  in  the  body,  as  makes  them  superior 
to  the  body ;  subordinates  the  passions,  and  evens  the  tem- 
pers of  the  body  ;  prepares  them  to  a  state  of  robust  and 
massive  healthiness;  gives  them  clearer  heads,  and  nobler 
sentiments  of  truth ;  preparing  them,  in  that  manner,  to 
be  good  scholars,  to  have  their  affectional  nature  opened 
wide  by  a  general  love,  to  have  their  perceptive  feeling 
quickened  to  all  highest  forms  of  beauty  and  good, 
and  so  to  have  them  ready,  more  and  more  ready,  for  a 
state  of  eternally  unsealed  affinity  with  God.  There  is 
not  any  thing,  in  the  highest  ranges  of  their  spiritual 
and  religious  nature,  that  will  not  be  somehow  affected, 
and  powerfully  too,  by  the  feeding  of  their  bodies. 
Even  their  conscience  itself,  which  is  God's  own  organ 
or  throne,  so  to  speak,  in  their  nature — the  most  self- 
asserting  and,  as  we  should  say,  most  indestructible 
of  all  their  powers — can  be  made  to  ring  out  clear  and 
true,  like  a  bell  in  the  night,  or  it  can  be  stifled  and 
choked,  so  as  scarcely  to  be  audible — all  by  the  mere 
feeding  of  the  body.  So  there  is  a  feeding  that  makes 
a  manly  life,  and  a  feeding  that  makes  a  mean,  weak, 


288  PHYSICAL    NURTURE 

ignoble  life.  So  there  is  a  feeding  wliicli  makes  room 
for  God,  and  a  feeding  that  leaves  him  no  vacant  space 
or  chamber  to  fill.  The  question  here  is  not,  exactly, 
what  converting  power  is  exerted  or  not  exerted,  what 
Christian  truth  impressed  or  not  impressed,  but  it  is 
what  kind  of  metal,  in  fact,  the  future  man  is  to  be 
made  of;  for  all  that  is  entered,  thus  early,  into  the 
feeding  habit  of  the  body,  is  about  as  really  composite 
and  substantial  as  that  which  is  prepared  in  the  inborn 
properties  of  nature  itself.  This  feeding  nurture,  if  we 
take  the  real  sense  of  it,  is  to  grow  in  good  or  bad 
affinities  and  possibilities ;  to  grow  a  body  under  the 
soul,  or  over  it ;  to  form  a  good  or  bad  staple,  in  the 
substance  of  the  man,  which  is  going  to  remain  un- 
changed, by  all  his  future  changes  and  transformations, 
about  as  certainly  as  his  face,  or  gait,  and  in  much  the 
same  degree. 

To  complete  this  view  of  the  bodily  nurture  and 
keeping,  something  ought  also  to  be  said  of  personal 
neatness,  and  also  of  dress,  in  both  of  which  the  bodilv 
habit  is  concerned,  though  in  a  more  external  and  less 
decisive  way. 

As  regards  the  matter  of  personal  neatness,  I  will 
only  suggest  the  very  close  relationship  of  association 
between  it,  as  a  habit,  and  the  spiritual  habit  of  the 
soul  in  religion.  In  this  holy  endeavor  of  grace,  or 
religion,  the  soul  aspires  to  be  clean.  Conscious  of 
great  defilement  in  sin,  it  hears  a  call  to  come  and  be 
made  white,  even   as   the  snow.     It  begins  with  the 


TO    BE    A    MEANS    OF    GRACE.  289 

prayer — "  Create  in  me  a  clean  heart,  0  God,"  and  the 
loDging  after  purity,  and  a  clean  consciousness  before 
Him,  draws  it  on.  To  be  washed,  purified,  made 
clean — under  these,  and  such  like  terms  of  aspiration, 
it  is  exercised,  in  all  the  keeping  of  the  life,  that  it 
may  incur  no  spot  or  stain,  and  be  elBfectually  purged 
from  all  most  subtle  defilements.  In  this  view,  bodily 
neatness,  or  the  cleanly  keeping  of  the  person,  is  a  kind 
of  outward  religion  going  before,  preparing  tastes, 
images,  sensibilities,  habits  that  make  the  soul  more 
akin  to  religion,  readier  to  feel  the  obligation,  and 
labor  in  the  purifying  endeavor.  And,  in  this  view, 
the  mother,  the  poor  Christian  mother,  who  has  noth- 
ing of  this  world's  good,  as  we  commonly  speak,  to  put 
upon  her  children,  has  yet  one  of  the  best  goods  of  all, 
which  she  may,  without  fail,  bestow,  viz:  a  cleanly 
habit.  She  gives  them  a  great  mark  of  honor,  and  sets 
them  in  a  way  of  great  hope  and  preferment,  as  regards 
all  highest  character,  when  she  trains  them  to  a  felt 
necessity  of  neatness  and  order.  On  the  other  hand, 
if  she  allows  them  to  grow  up  in  a  filthy  and  loose 
habit,  crowding  all  bounty  upon  them,  and  breathing 
out-  her  soul  beside,  in  prayer  and  fasting  on  their  ac- 
count, it  will  be  wonderful  if  they  have  much  sensi- 
bility to  the  defilements  of  the  soul,  or  come  to  God  in 
any  determinate  longings  after  purity.  Nay,  it  will  be 
wonderful  if  the  dirt  upon  their  persons  and  clothing 
is  not  found  upon  their  conscience  also,  and  if  they  do 
not  go  on  to  live  the  disorder  in  their  souls,  which  has 
been  the  untidy  element  of  their  bodies. 
I  25 


290  PHYSICAL    NUBTURE 

There  is  also  this  very  peculiar  excellence  in  neat- 
ness, that  it  is  not  ambitious,  not  for  show,  but  more  for 
what  it  is  in  itself — an  honest  kind  of  benefit,  or  good, 
that  brings  along  no  bad  or  false  motive  with  it. 
Hence  there  is  no  temptation  in  the  practice.  Honor 
and  ornament  and  grace  of  poverty,  as  it  often  is,  it  is 
only  the  more  truly  such,  that  it  simply  fulfills  and  per- 
petuates a  fixed  necessity,  looking  after  no  reward,  save 
what  it  is  to  itself.  Formed  to  such  a  habit,  and 
scarcely  conscious  of  it,  the  children  grow  into  a  kind 
of  pure  simplicity  in  good,  which  is  itself  one  of  the 
finest  symbols  and  surest  outward  preparations  of  the 
religious  life  and  character. 

The  subject  of  dress,  taken  as  related  to  religious 
character  in  youth,  is  one  of  transcendent  importance, 
but  as  I  am  treating  mostly  of  what  is  to  be  done  for 
children,  in  the  few  first  years  of  their  training,  I  shall 
dismiss  the  subject  with  only  a  few  suggestions,  such  as 
my  particular  purpose  appears  to  require. 

There  is  this  very  singular  and  striking  contrast  be- 
tween animals  and  men,  that  they  are  born  dressed, 
and  these  to  be  dressed ;  while  yet  the  fact  of  a  dress 
is  equally  necessary  to  both.  The  object  of  the  dis- 
tinction appears  to  be,  to  allow,  in  the  latter  case,  a 
certain  liberty  of  form  and  appearance,  even  as  there  is 
given  a  grand  central  liberty  of  life  and  character 
within.  It  allows  us  to  choose  what  shall  be  added  to 
finish  out  our  form,  or  appearing ;  and  it  is  a  singular 
fact,  in  this  connection,  that  we  always  take  our  dress 
to  be,  in  some  sense,  ourselves ;  just  as  if  it  grew  out 


TO    BE    A    MEANS    OF    GEACE.  291 

of  our  bodily  substance ;  so  that  we  feel  ourselves  or- 
dinarily limited  and  hampered,  in  behavior  and  man- 
ners, in  thought  and  feeling,  and  fancy,  by  the  dress  we 
have  on.  The  consciousness  of  being  badly,  or  half 
absurdly  dressed,  makes  us  awkward.  We  can  not  sit 
down  to  write  in  a  sordid  and  tattered  dress — thought 
can  not  sufficiently  respect  itself,  the  feeling  nature  and 
the  taste  and  the  fancy  can  not  be  in  trim  in  such  a 
guise.  As  a  king  would  not  like  to  appear  in  the 
dress  of  a  convict,  so  they  ask  a  dress  that  more  respects 
their  quality.  There  is  a  fearfully  powerful  reaction, 
thus,  in  dress,  upon  what  is  inmost  and  deepest  in  char- 
acter. And  so  much  is  there  in  this  fact,  that  every 
Christian  parent  should  be  fully  alive  to  it,  even  from 
the  first ;  understanding  that  the  child  is  going  to  en- 
large his  consciousness,  so  as,  in  a  sense,  to  take  in  his 
dress  and  be  configured  to  it — inverting  the  common 
order  of  speech  on  the  subject,  when  we  talk  of  cut- 
ting the  dress  to  the  child ;  for  it  is  equally  true,  in  a 
different  sense,  that  the  child  will  be  cut  to  his  dress. 

Hence  the  dreadful  mischief  done  to  a  child,  by  what 
may  be  called  the  dolling  of  it ;  that  is,  by  dressing, 
or  over-dressing  it,  just  to  please,  or  amuse,  or,  what  is 
really  more  true,  to  tickle  a  certain  weak  and  foolish 
pride  in  the  parents.  What  meantime  has  become  of 
that  most  tender  and  godly  concern,  which  belongs  to 
the  Christian  charge  put  upon  them,  in  the  gift  of  this 
same  child  ?  It  takes  whole  months,  how  often,  to  get 
the  child's  looks  and  dress  into  such  trim  that  it  can  be 
offered  by  them  for  baptism,  making  the  desired  im- 


292  PHYSICAL    NURTURE 

pression ;  in  whicli  it  turns  out  that  tlie  chief  object, 
to  them,  of  baptism,  is  the  exhibition  of  the  doll  thej 
have  been  dressing  ;  not  to  get  the  seal  and  sacrament 
of  God's  mercj  upon  it,  as  a  creature  in  the  heritage 
of  their  own  corrupted  life. 

And  then,  afterwards,  the  dressing  goes  on  still,  in 
faithful  keeping  with  its  sad  beginning.  In  a  few  days 
this  same  child  appears,  m^arching  the  streets,  in  the 
figure  of  a  little  gentleman  with  a  cane ;  or  if  it  be  a 
daughter,  hung  with  necklaces  and  chains,  and  set  off 
with  as  much  of  finery  as  can  well  be  supported — visi- 
bly conscious,  in  either  case,  of  the  fine  show  being 
made ;  even  as  the  foolish  parents,  it  might  fitly  despise, 
were  just  now  admiring  their  doll  at  home,  and  prais- 
ing to  itself  the  pretty  figure  it  made ! 

Is  this  now  the  dress  of  a  Christian  child  ?  is  this 
such  a  dress  as  a  properly  Christian  nurture  prescribes  ? 
What  is  this  child  training  for,  but  simply  to  be  a  fop, 
or  fashionist,  or  fool  ?  This  taste  for  show,  and  finery, 
and  flattery — what  is  it  but  the  beginning  of  all  irrelig- 
ion  ?  and  what  will  the  after  life  be,  but  the  continu- 
ance of  this  beginning  ? 

Just  contrary  to  this,  whoever  will  bring  up  a  child 
for  God,  must  put  him,  at  the  very  first,  into  God's 
modes  and  measures.  The  real  question  of  dress,  is 
what  shall  be  put  upon  this  child,  to  make  it  feel 
most  like  a  Christian — what  will  give  him  the  finest 
feeling  with  the  least  of  show  and  vanity  ?  "What  will 
leave  him  in  a  state  most  natural,  and  simple,  and  far- 
thest from  affectation  ?     What  will  be  most  like  to  the 


TO    BE    A    MEANS    OF   GRACE.  293 

putting  on  of  Clirist  himself,  his  righteousness,  beauty, 
truth,  meekness,  and  dignity?  Dress  your  child  for 
Christ,  if  you  will  have  him  a  Christian ;  bring  every 
thing,  in  the  training,  even  of  his  body,  to  this  one 
final  aim,  and  it  will  be  strange,  if  the  Christian  body 
you  give  him  does  not  contain  a  Christian  soul. 

25* 


IV. 

THE  TREATMENT  THAT  DISCOURAGES  PIETY. 

"  Fathers  provoke  not  your  children  to  anger,  lest  they  be  discouraged." 
— Colossians,  iii.  21. 

DiscouKAGED,  the  apostle  means,  in  good ;  that  is,  in 
worthy  purposes  and  pious  endeavors.  Nothing  will 
more  certainly  put  a  child  in  a  discouraged  feeling,  than 
to  be  angered  by  a  parent's  ill-nature  and  abuse.  The 
anger  is,  most  certainly,  far  enough  from  being  itself  a 
state  of  discouragement ;  but  anger  is  a  passion  that  can 
not  hold  long  and  the  after  state  into  which  it  subsides, 
in  the  case  of  inferiors  and  dependants,  is  commonly  a 
giving  up  to  the  bad,  a  passionless  and  low  desperation, 
that  is  equivalent  to  a  general  surrender  6f  all  high 
aims  and  aspirations. 

In  this  view,  it  would  not  be  altogether  amiss,  and 
certainly  no  improper  use  of  the  apostle's  words,  if  I 
were  to  offer  under  them  a  lecture  to  parents,  on  the 
provoking  ways  of  treatment  and  government.  But  I 
have  chosen  them  for  a  different  purpose,  and  one  that 
is  more  inclusive,  viz :  to  introduce  and  give  sanction 
to  a  discourse  on — 

The  discouragement  of  piety  in  children ;  the  ivays  in 
which  it  is  discouraged^  and  the  great  care  necessary  to  avoid 
a  mistake  so  injurious.  , 


,   THE    TREATMENT.  295 

I  speak  here,  of  course,  to  pareiits  wlio  really  desire 
tlie  spiritual  welfare  of  their  children.  Nothing  is  far- 
ther off  from  their  design,  than  to  push  their  children 
away  from  Christ  into  a  state  of  alienated  and  discour- 
aged feeling.  And  yet  they  do  it,  very  often,  by  faults 
of  management  not  suspected,  and  never  afterwards  dis- 
covered ;  unless,  possibly,  after  the  injury  is  done,  when 
it  can  no  longer  be  repaired. 

It  becomes,  in  this  view,  a  very  serious  and  prac- 
tically important  question,  how,  or  by  what  methods, 
Christian  parents,  unawares  to  themselves  and  contrary 
to  their  really  good  intentions,  discourage  piety  in  their 
children?  Let  us  see  if  we  can  partially  answer  the 
question. 

We  begin,  then,  where  the  apostle  begins  with  his 
remonstrance.  His  language  is  particularly  addressed 
to  fathers ;  for  he  seems  to  have  in  view  the  case  of 
children,  who  are  in  the  more  advanced  stages  of  child- 
hood, or  in  what  we  call  the  period  of  youth.  And 
yet  the  language  is  equally  applicable  to  the  case  of 
mothers  and  very  little  children.  It  might  not  be 
wholly  amiss  for  a  half-grown  lad,  or  youth,  who  has 
violated  his  father's  feelings,  by  some  really  base  act  of 
crime,  or  disobedience,  to  see,  by  the  smoke  of  his  indig- 
nant passion,  how  deeply  his  right  sensibility  is  revolted. 
That  will  never  discourage  him  in  any  thing  good. 
It  might  even  rouse  his  moral  nature,  when  nothing 
less  violent  would  suffice.  The  father  will  really  dis- 
courage good  in  his  son,  only  when  he  stings  him  with 
a  sense  of  injustice,  and  keeps  him  in  a  wounded  feel- 


296  THE    TREATMENT 

ing,  bj  his  own  ungoverned,  groundless  passion.  But' 
in  the  case  of  the  mother,  deahng  with  her  very  young 
child,  there  is  no  place  even  for  so  much  as  a  feeling  of 
impatience.  Ko  crisis  occurs  that  she  has  any  right  to 
carry  by  a  storm.  And  yet  there  are  many  mothers 
who  breed  a  climate  of  storms  for  their  children  to  grow 
up  in,  even  from  the  first.  They  make  an  element  of 
pettishness  and  passion,  and  call  it  Christian  nurture  to 
maintain  a  kind  of  quarrel  with  their  children,  from 
infancy  upward.  We  do  not  commonly  conceive  that 
the  children  are  discouraged,  thus,  in  the  matter  of 
piety ;  but  the  real  fact  is,  that  their  better,  higher  nature, 
quite  worn  down  by  such  treatment,  sinks  at  last  into 
a  kind  of  atrophy,  which  is  the  essence  of  all  discour- 
agement. By  the  time  they  are  passed  through  this 
first  chapter  of  torment,  their  faces  even  have  begun 
to  take  on  a  forlorn  expression,  as  if  their  well-abused 
feeling  had  been  quite  choked  off  from  every  thing 
hopeful  or  good.  Nothing  is  more  beautiful  than  the 
God- ward  affinities,  and  glad  impulses  to  good,  in  a 
childish  soul ;  but  when  it  has  once  been  kiln-dried  in 
this  hot  furnace  of  motherly  or  fatherly  passion,  there 
is  no  more  any  putting  forth  after  the  divine.  A  kind 
of  indifference,  or  sullen  prejudice,  sets  off  the  heart 
from  God,  and  the  gentle  affinities  close  up  under  the 
stupor  of  so  great  early  abuse  and  discouragement. 

Children  are  also  discouraged  and  hardened  to  good 
by  too  much  of  prohibition.  There  is  a  monotony  of 
continuous,  ever  sounding,  prohibition,  which  is  really 
awful.     It  does  not  stop  with  ten  commandments,  like 


THAT    DISCOUKAGES    PIETY.  297 

the  word  of  Sinai,  but  it  keeps  the  thunder  up,  from 
day  to  day,  saying  always  thou  shalt  not  do  this,  nor 
this,  nor  this,  till,  in  fact,  there  is  really  nothing  left  to 
be  done.  The  whole  enjoyment,  use,  benefit,  of  life  is 
quite  used  up  by  the  prohibitions.  The  child  lives 
under  a  tilt-hammer  of  commandment,  beaten  to  the 
ground  as  fast  as  he  attempts  to  rise.  All  command- 
ments, of  course,  in  such  a  strain  of  injunction,  come  to 
sound  very  much  alike,  and  one  appears  to  be  about  as 
important  as  another.  And  the  result  is  that,  as  they 
are  all  in  the  same  emphasis,  and  are  all  equally  annoy- 
ing, the  child  learns  to  hate  them  all  alike,  and  puts 
them  all  away.  He  could  not  think  of  heartily  accept- 
ing them  aJl^  and  it  would  even  be  a  kind  of  irrever- 
ence to  make  a  selection.  Nothing  so  fatally  worries  a 
child,  as  this  fault  of  over-commandment.  The  study 
should  be  rather  to  forbid  as  few  things  as  possible,  and 
then  to  soundly  enforce  what  is  forbidden.  Such  kind 
of  prohibitions  the  child  will  even  like,  and  will  be  all 
the  happier,  that  he  has  something  good  to  observe. 
But  nothing  can  be  more  impotent,  in  the  way  of  au- 
thority, than  the  din  of  a  continual  prohibition.  Even 
the  commandments  of  God  will,  in  such  a  case,  be 
robbed  of  all  just  authority,  by  the  custom  of  a  gen- 
eral weariness  and  distaste ;  in  which  all  highest  man- 
dates are -leveled  to  equality  with  the  pettiest  and 
most  useless  restraints. 

Again,  it  is  a  great  discouragement  to  piety  in  chil- 
dren, when  they  are  governed  in  a  hard,  unfeeling,  way 
or  in  a  manner  of  force  and  overbearing  absolutism. 


298  THE    TREATMENT 

Any  thing  wliicli  puts  tlie  child  aloof  from  the  parent, 
or  takes  away  the  confidence  of  love  and  sympathy, 
will  as  certainly  be  a  wall  to  shut  him  away  from  God. 
If  his  Christian  father  is  felt  only  as  a  tyrant,  he  will 
seem  to  have  a  tyrant  in  Grod's  name  to  bear ;  and  that 
will  be  enough  to  create  a  sullen  prejudice  against  all 
sacred  things.  Nor  is  the  case  at  all  better  when  the 
child  is  cowed  under  fear  of  such  a  parent,  and  reduced 
to  a  feeling  of  dread  or  abject  submission.  There  is  a 
beautiful  courage  in  children  as  respects  approach  to 
God,  when  God  is  not  presented  as  a  bugbear ;  and  this 
natural  state  of  courage,  is  just  that  which  makes  the 
time  of  childhood  so  ingenuously  open  to  religion.  But 
if  their  courage,  even  toward  their  father,  is  already 
broken  down  into  fear  and  servile  submission,  they  will 
only  think  of  God  with  as  much  greater  fear,  and  shrink 
from  all  the  claims  of  piety  with  a  kind  of  abject  recoil, 
as  from  a  thing  forbidden.  No  gentleness  even  of 
Christ  will  sufi&ce,  in  such  a  case,  to  win,  or  reassure  the 
broken  courage  of  the  soul.  I  recall  a  family  in  which 
the  father,  known  as  a  man  of  condition  and  of  no 
little  repute  for  his  Christian  good  works,  brought  up  a 
large  family  of  boys  to  be  ruled  at  a  distance.  He 
addressed  them  in  a  kind  of  imperious,  unfeeling  way ; 
not  with  any  violence  of  manner,  but  with  a  stern  faced 
grin  that  seemed  to  say,  "it  is  well  that  you  fear  me." 
And  fear  him  they  most  certainly  did — ^fear  was  the 
element  in  which  they  grew.  And  the  result  was  that 
having  no  self-respect,  and  living  under  a  law  of  mere 
suppression,  they  fell  into  base  immoralities  from  their 


THAT    DISCOUKAGES    PIETY.  299 

cliildliood,  and  were  never  afterwards  known,  even  one 
of  them,  to  have  so  mucli  as  a  tlionght  of  piety. 

Another  and  even  more  common  way  of  discouraging 
children  in  matters  of  piety  is  by  an  over-exacting  man- 
ner, or  by  an  extreme  difficulty  of  being  pleased.  Chil- 
dren love  approbation,  and  are  specially  disappointed, 
when  they  fail  of  it  in  their  meritorious  endeavors.  Their 
chagrin  is  nevermore  complete,  in  fact,  than  when,  having 
set  themselves  to  any  purpose  of  well-doing,  they  are  still 
repulsed  by  a  manner  of  fault-finding  at  the  end,  and 
blamed  on  account  of  some  trivial  defect  which  they  did 
not  know,  and  would  really  have  tried  to  avoid.  Some 
parents  appear  to  think  it  a  matter  of  true  faithfulness, 
that  they  be  not  too  easily  pleased,  lest  their  children 
should  take  up  loose  impressions  of  the  strictness  of  duty. 
They  do  not  consider  how  they  would  fare  themselves, 
if  God  were  to  make  a  point  of  treating  them  in  the 
same  manner.  His  manner  with  them  is  exactly  oppo- 
site. He  perceives  that  he  will  only  repel  them,  by 
making  it  a  matter  of  difficulty  to  please  him,  and  that 
he  could  never  draw  them  on,  if  he  did  not  yield  them 
his  smile  under  great  faults  and  shortcomings,  and  did 
not  give  them  the  testimony  that  they  please  him,  when 
they  are  a  great  way  off  from  his  own  scale  of  perfec- 
tion. In  all  which  we  may  readily  see  how  great  dis- 
couragement is  put  upon  children,  in  all  their  good 
attempts,  when  their  parents  will  not  allow  themselves 
to  be  pleased  with  any  thing  they  do.  Possibly  they 
are  withheld  by  scruples  of  orthodoxy.  If  so,  the  mis- 
chief is  only  the  greater.     What  can  win  a  child  to  the 


300  THE    TKEATMENT 

attempt  to  please  God,  wlien  his  parents  dare  not  suJffer 
so  mucli  as  a  thought  of  the  possibihty  in  him,  and, 
for  the  same  reason,  dare  not  so  much  as  approve  him 
themselves.  Such  kind  of  orthodoxy  can  not  be  too 
soon  forsaken,  or  too  earnestly  repented  of. 

Closely  akin  to  this,  is  the  fault  of  holding  displeas- 
ure too  long,  and  yielding  it  with  too  great  difficulty. 
It  is  right  that  children,  doing  wrong,  should  encounter 
some  kind  of  treatment  that  indicates  displeasure.  But 
the  displeasure  should  not  take  the  manner  of  a  grudge, 
and  hold  on  after  the  wrong  is  visibly  felt  and  re- 
pented of.  On  the  contrary,  there  should  even  be  a 
hastening  toward  the  child,  in  glad  recognitions  and 
cordial  greetings,  when  the  tokens  only  of  relenting 
begin  to  appear ;  even  as  the  prodigal's  father  is  repre- 
sented, in  the  parable,  as  discovering  him,  in  his  return, 
when  he  is  yet  a  great  way  off,  and  advancing  to  meet 
and  embrace  him.  By  this  tender  figure  God  is  shown 
us,  and  the  holy  generosity  of  his  fatherhood  is  repre- 
sented. We  see  that  he  is  only  the  more  ready  to  be 
pleased,  because  of  his  magnanimity;  holding  no  re- 
sentments, putting  off  the  feeling  of  offense  at  the  ear- 
liest moment,  and  the  cheapest  possible  rate.  Nay,  He 
will  even  take  our  good  by  anticipation ;  accepting  us 
for  what  we  ask,  before  he  can  accept  us  for  what  we 
are.  Well  is  it  for  those  parents  who  think  it  incum- 
bent on  them,  to  hold  their  displeasure  till  the  culprit 
is  sufficiently  scathed  by  it,  if  they  do  not  hold  it  just 
a  little  too  long ;  turning,  thus,  even  his  repentance  into 
a  sullen  aversion,  and  setting  it  in  his  feeling,  that  there 


THAT    DISCOURAGES    PIETY.  801 

is  the  same  heavy  tariff  of  displeasure  still  to  be  paid, 
when  he  would  forsake  his  sins  and  turn  himself  to 
God.  When  will  it  be  learned  that  penance  is  no  fit 
beginning  of  piety  ? 

And  here  let  me  speak  of  the  very  great  danger, 
after  a  time  of  discipline,  that  the  parent  may  hold  his 
displeasure  too  long;  as  he  certainly  will,  if  ttiere  is 
any  ugly  feeling,  or  wicked,  natural  resentment  in  him. 
Thus  Jean  Paul  beautifully  says  : — "  A  punishment  is 
scarcely  of  such  importance  to  a  child  as  the  succeeding 
quarter  of  an  hour,  and  the  transition  to  forgiveness. 
After  the  storm,  the  seed  finds  the  soil  warm  and  soft- 
ened ;  the  terror  and  hatred  of  the  punishment  are  now 
past,  which  before  resisted  and  struggled  against  the 
word,  and  gentle  instruction  finds  its  way,  and  brings 
healing  with  it,  as  honey  assuages  the  sting  of  bees,  and 
oil  the  pain  of  a  wound.  In  this  hour  we  can  say 
much,  if  we  use  the  utmost  gentleness  of  voice,  and  by 
the  manifestation  of  our  own  pain,  soothe  that  of  the 
child.  But  every  continuance  of  wintry  anger  is  pois- 
onous. Mothers  easily  fall  into  this  prolongation  of 
punishment.  This  continuance  of  anger ;  this  would-be 
punishment  of  pretending  a  diminution  of  love,  either 
fails  to  be  comprehended  by  the  child,  because  he  is 
wholly  immersed  in  the  present  and  so  misses  its  effect, 
or  else  he  becomes  satisfied  with  a  deprivation  of  the 
signs  of  love,  and- learns  to  do  without  it;  or  else  he 
is  embittered  by  the  continuance  of  punishment  for  a 
sin  which  he  has  already  buried.  Through  this  pro- 
longation of  harshness,  we  lose  that  beautiful  and  touch- 


302  THE    TKEATMENT 

ing  transition  into  forgiveness,  wliicli^  by  coming  slowly 
and  after  a  long  period,  only  loses  its  power. "^ 

Hasty  and  false  accusations  again  are  a  great  discour- 
agement to  piety  in  cliildren.  Their  good  feeling,  or 
intention,  appears  to  be  rated  low  by  their  parents,  when 
they  are  put  under  the  ban  of  dishonor,  b}''  false  and 
groundless  imputations;  and  they  are  very  likely,  as 
the  next  thing,  to  show  that  they  are  no  better  than 
they  were  taken  to  be.  On  this  account,  a  wise  parent 
will  be  religiously  careful  of  all  volunteer  and  random 
charges  of  blame,  lest  he  may  discourage  fatally  all 
pious  or  ingenuous  aspirations  by  them ;  for  to  batter 
self-respect,  or  insult  the  sense  of  character,  thus  gratuit- 
ously, is  the  surest  way  possible  to  break  every  natural 
charm  of  virtue  and  religion.  The  effect  is  scarcely 
better  where  acknowledged  faults  are  exaggerated,  and 
set  off  in  colors  of  derision.  It  will  do  for  a  parent  to 
be  just,  severely  just ;  for,  by  that  means,  he  will  best 
impress  the  sacred  severity  of  principle.  God  is  just  in 
all  his  charges  and  reproofs ;  but  there  is  no  manner  of 
excess  or  spirit  of  exaggeration  in  them.  And  exactly 
this  it  is  which  makes  his  kindness  so  beautiful,  so  in- 
spiring to  our  courage,  so  attractive  to  our  love.  But 
harsh  justice,  exaggerated  justice,  is  injustice.  When  a 
child,  therefore,  is  persecuted  by  railing  words,  cauter- 
ized bv  satire,  blamed  without  reason  or  measure  for 
faults  not  easily  corrected,  the  severity  is  really  unprin- 
cipled as  well  as  unfriendly,  and  is  only  the  more 
dreadfully  mischievous,  that  it  takes  on  airs  of  piety, 

*  L9vana  iii.  §  65. 


THAT    DISCOURAaES    PIETY.  303 

and  bears  the  Christian  name.  How  can  he  be  drawn 
by  that  which  has  no  grace  of  allowance,  and  yields  no 
sympathy  to  the  struggles  of  his  infirmity  ?  How  many 
poor  children  are  beaten  out  of  all  their  natural  affini- 
ties for  good,  by  just  this  kind  of  cruelty !  They  had 
parents  who,  in  fault  of  the  better  evidences  of  love  and 
patience,  thought  to  make  "up  the  deficit  in  being  at 
least  severe  enough  to  be  Christian ;  which,  though  it 
was  an  easy  grace  for  them — the  only  grace  at  their 
command — was,  alas!  fearfully  hard  on  the  subjects. 

We  bring  into  view  a  different  class  of  discouraging 
causes,  when  we  speak  of  that  anxiousness,  or  always 
miserable  concern,  for  children,  by  which  some  parents 
keep  them  in  a  continual  torment  of  suppression.  We 
have  really  no  right  to  allow  a  properly  anxious  feeling 
any  where.  Anxiety  is  a  word  of  unbelief,  or  unrea- 
soning dread.  Full  faith  in  God  puts  it  at  rest ;  any 
solid  conviction  of  necessity  and  right  is  chloroform  to 
the  pain  of  it.  And  we  have  the  less  right  to  be 
anxious,  that  it  is  a  feeling  which  destroys  the  comfort 
of  others  whenever  and  wheresoever  it  appears.  Only 
to  be  in  a  room  with  an  anxious  person,  though  a  stran- 
ger, is  enough  to  make  one  positively  unhappy ;  for  the 
manner,  the  nervous  unsteadiness,  and  worry,  and  shift, 
are  so  irresistibly  expressive,  that  no  effort  of  silence,  or 
suppression,  is  able  to  conceal  the  torment.  To  go  a 
journey  thus  with  an  anxious  person,  is  about  the  worst 
kind  of  pilgrimage.  What  then  is  the  woe  put  upon 
a  hapless  little  one  or  child,  who  is  shut  up  day  by  day 
and  year  by  year,  to  the  always  fearing  look  and  depre- 


304  THE    TREATMENT 

eating  whine,  the  questioning,  protesting,  super-caution- 
ary keeping  of  a  nervously  anxious  mother.  If  the 
child  catches  the  infection  himself,  he  will  never  come 
to  any  thing ;  never  dare  any  great  purpose  that  be- 
longs to  a  man,  or  a  Christian.  And  if  he  does  not 
catch  it,  which  is  more  probable,  then  he  will  pitch  him- 
self into  a  campaign  of  will  and  passion  with  all  that 
kind  of  control,  a  good  deal  less  rational,  probably, 
than  the  control  itself.  Simply  to  enter  the  house  will 
raise  a  breeze  in  his  feeling,  and  he  will  be  worried  and 
fretted,  till  he  has  somehow  made  his  escape.  Nothing 
is  more  opposite  to  the  hopeful  and  free  spirit  of  child- 
hood, and  nothing  will  so  dreadfully  overcast  the  sky 
of  childhood,  as  the  sad  kind  of  weather  it  is  always 
making.  It  worries  the  child  in  every  putting  forth 
and  play,  lest  he  should  somehow  be  hurt ;  takes  him 
away,  or  would,  from  every  contact  with  the  great 
world's  occasions,  that  would  give  fit  schooling  to  his 
manhood.  And  then,  since  the  child  will  most  cer- 
tainly learn,  at  last,  how  little  reason  there  was  in  the 
eternal  distress  of  so  many  fears  and  imaginations 
of  harm,  he  is  sure  to  be  issued  finally,  in  a  feeling 
of  confirmed  disrespect,  which  is  the  end  of  all  good 
influence  or  advice.  And  then  it  will  be  so  much  the 
worse,  if  the  anxiety  whose  bagpipe  melody  has  been 
the  torment  of  his  early  days,  has  shown  itself  in  the 
same  unregulated  way  in  matters  of  religion.  ISToth- 
ing  will  set  a  child  farther  off  from  religion,  or  make 
him  more  utterly  incapable  of  sympathy  with  it,  than 
to  have  had  it  put  upon  him  in  a  whining  and  misgiv- 


THAT    DISCOURAGES    PIETY.  305 

ing  way,  in  all  his  moods  and  occasions.  ISTo !  there 
must  be  a  certain  courage  in  maternity  and  the  religion 
of  it.  The  child  must  be  wisely  trusted  to  danger,  and 
shown  how  to  conquer  it.  A  pleasure  must  be  taken 
in  giving  him  a  certain  range  of  adventure;  and  he 
must  see  that  his  courage  and  capacity  are  confided  in. 
And  then  it  must  be  seen,  in  the  same  way,  that  his 
truth,  fidelity,  piety,  are  as  much  expected  as  his  man- 
hood. In  a  certain  good  sense,  the  mother  may  be 
anxious  for  him,  burdened  in  her  prayers  in  his  be- 
half, but  she  must  take  on  hope  and  confidence  nev- 
ertheless, and  show  that  courage  in  him,  as  regards  all 
good  endeavor,  is  met  and  supported  by  courage  in 
herself. 

Again,  it  will  be  found  that  piety  is  very  commonly 
discouraged  in  children,  by  giving  them  tests  of  charac- 
ter that  are  inappropriate  to  their  age.  There  is  an 
immense  cruelty  put  upon  children  here,  by  parents 
who  have  really  no  design  but  simply  to  be  faithful. 
Their  child,  for  example,  loses  his  temper  in  some  mat- 
ter in  which  he  is  crossed ;  and  the  conclusion  is  forth- 
with sprung  upon  him  that  he  has  a  bad  heart,  and  is 
certainly  no  Christian  child.  Whereupon  he  ceases  to 
pray ;  or,  if  he  is  put  to  it  as  a  form,  does  it'with  an 
averted  and  reluctant  feeling,  as  if  the  wrong  were  con- 
clusive against  his  prayers.  It  is  only  necessary  to  ask 
how  the  father,  how  the  mother  would  themselves  fare, 
tested  by  the  same  rule?  If  irritation,  passion,  any 
loss  of  temper,  is  conclusive  against  the  little  being 
who  has  scarcely  began  to  be  prR^ticed  in  self-govern- 

26* 


306  THE    TREATMENT 

ment,  how  is  it  with  tliem  who  ought  by  this  time  to  be 
immovably  fixed  in  their  serenity  ?  So  if  the  child  has 
played,  or  shown  some  eagerness  for  play  on  Sunday, 
has  not  the  father,  or  the  mother,  who  indeed  has  out- 
grown all  such  care  for  play,  been  delving  still,  even  in 
the  church  worship  itself,  and  at  the  table  of  commun- 
ion, in  schemes,  and  projects,  and  works,  that  thrust 
out,  for  the  tine,  even  these  most  sacred  things  from 
any  due  place  in  their  attention.  If  sometimes  a  mere 
child  is  carried  a^vay  by  exuberant  life  and  playfulness, 
is  that  worse  than  to  be  cankered  by  the  love  of  gain, 
or  by  the  severe  and  sober  sins  of  a  grasping,  eager, 
worldly  manl^ood  ?  The  sins  of  children  are  ingenuous 
and  open,  and  on  just  that  account  are  to  be  less 
severely  judged.  The  sins  of  manhood  are  sins  of  grav- 
ity, prudence,  self-seeking,  always  contriving  to  wear 
some  plausible  aspect  of  sobriety  and  dignity ;  but  they 
are  not  any  the  more  consistent  with  piety  on  that  ac- 
count. We  do  not  judge  that  any  one  is  of  course  with- 
out piety,  or  is  no  Christian,  because  he  has  faults,  or 
failings,  or  even  because  he  is  overtaken  by  sins ;  why 
then  should  a  child  be  conde'mned,  as  having  no  just 
evidence  of  piety,  just  because  he  is  only  a  little  less 
under  the  power  of  evil  than  his  Christian  father  and 
mother?  God,  I  am  certain,  judges  children's  faults  in 
no  such  manner,  and  therefore  it  is  never  to  be  assumed 
by  us  that  they  are^  without  piety,  because  they  falter 
in  some  things.  If  they  only  falter,  seeming  still  to 
love  what  is  good,  and  struggle  ingenuously  after  it, 
there  is  just  as  good  reason  to  hope  that  their  hearts 


THAT    DISCOURAGES    PIETY.  307 

have  been  touched  by  the  Spirit  of  God,  as  there  is  that 
the  hearts  of  older  persons  have  been,  when  they  are 
groping  always  in  the  seventh  chapter  of  the  Eomans, 
having  a  mind  to  serve  God,  but  always  failing  in  the 
service.  The  child  must  be  judged  or  tested  in  the 
same  general  way  as  the  adult.  If  he  is  wholly  per- 
verse, has  no  spirit  of  duty,  turns  away  from  all  relig- 
ious things,  it  will  not  discourage  any  thing  good  in 
him  to  tell  him  that  he  is  without  piety ;  but  if  he 
loves  religious  things,  wants  to  be  in  them,  tries  after  a 
good  and  obedient  life,  he  is  to  be  shown  how  tenderly 
God  regards  him,  how  ready  he  is  to  forgive  him ;  and 
when  he  stumbles  or  falls, ^  how  kindly  he  will  raise  him 
up,  how  graciously  help  him  to  stand.  Nor  does  it 
make  any  difference  that  no  time  is  remembered,  when 
he  seemed  to  be  brought  unto  God,  by  a  great  change 
of  experience,  such  as  adult  persons  are  often  the  sub- 
jects of.  He  ought  not  to  be  the  subject  of  any  such 
change ;  and  if  he  is  properly  trained,  will  not  be.  As 
regards  the  testing  of  his  condition  or  character,  noth- 
ing at  all  depends  on  that.  It  will  even  be  a  good  sign 
for  him  that  he  has  always  seemed  to  love  Christ ;  and 
it  will  be  no  proper  evidence  to  the  contrary,  that  he 
sometimes  falters.  Children  are  very  ingenuous,  and 
they  may  even  show  some  disinclination,  for  a  time,  to 
all  religious  duties,  without  creating  any  such  evidence. 
Adults  often  suffer  such  disinclination,  when  they  do 
not  allow  it  to  appear.  The  sum  of  all  I  would  say 
here  is,  let  children  be  judged  as  children,  and  let  them 
not  be  cruelly  discouraged  in  all  thoughts  of  love  to 


808  THE    TREATMENT 

Grod,  because  they  falter,  as  older  people  do ;  only  in  a 
different  manner. 

I  must  also  speak  of  another  and  more  general  mode 
of  discouragement,  in  what  may  be  called  the  holding 
back,  or  holding  aloof  system,  by  which  children  are 
denied  an  early  recognition  of  their  membership  in  the 
church,  and  an  admission  to  the  Lord's  table.  I  have 
spoken  of  this  membership  already,  in  another  place, 
and  shall  also  speak,  hereafter,  of  the  supper  in  its  more 
positive  uses.  What  I  now  refer  to,  more  especially, 
is  the  negatively  bad  or  discouraging  effect  thrown 
upon  their  piety,  by  these  methods  of  detention,  or  ex- 
clusion. The  child  giving  evidence,  however  beauti- 
ful, of  his  piety,  is  still  kept  back  from  the  fellowship 
and  table  of  Christ,  for  the  simple  defect  of  years.  As 
if  years  were  one  of  the  Scripture  evidences  of  grace. 
Sometimes  the  difficulty  is  that  he  can  speak  of  no  ex- 
perience, or  change,  such  as  we  call  conversion ;  and 
sometimes,  if  he  can,  that  he  is  yet  too  young  to  be 
confided  in.  And  so  it  turns  out,  after  all  that  is  said 
of  the  membership  initiated  in  baptism,  that  nothing  is 
practically  made  of  it,  or  allowed  to  be  made  of  it.  The 
membership  it  creates  is  only  a  disjunctive  conjunction ; 
words  for  a  show,  answered  by  no  conditions  or  con- 
sequences of  fact.  The  poor  child  still  is  virtually 
counted  or  assumed  to  be  an  alien,  required  to  be  con- 
verted in  jusfthe  same  fashion  as  all  heathens  are,  and 
to  show  the  fact  by  the  same  kind  of  evidences.  The 
little,  saintly  daughter,  for  example,  of  a  venerable 
Presbyterian  minister,  aching  for  a  place  at  the  Lord's 


THAT    DISCOURAGES    PIETY.  809    " 

table,  goes  to  her  father,  after  being  several  times  post- 
poned by  him  and  by  the  session,  asking — "father, 
when  shall  I  be  old  enough  to  be  a  Christian  ?"  He 
and  his  session,  alas !  did  not  believe  that  of  such  is 
the  kingdom  of  heaven.  Had  the  dear  child  gone  to 
Jesus,  she  would  most  certainly  have  gotten  a  different 
answer.  True,  the  religious  experience  of  children  is 
of  course  small — only  not  as  small,  or  unreliable,  by 
any  means,  as  the  experience  commonly  is  of  an  adult 
convert  only  a  few  weeks  old.  Besides,  what  is  the  use 
of  a  fold,  if  the  lambs  are  to  be  kept  outside  till  it  is 
seen  whether  they  can  stand  the  weather  ? 

The  chilling,  desolating  effect  of  this  very  unnatural 
and  cruel  practice,  will  be  understood  without  diffi- 
culty. ISTo  plan  could  be  devised  for  the  discourage- 
ment of  piety  in  children,  that  would  be  more  certain 
of  its  object.  They  are  only  mocked  and  tantalized  by 
their  baptism  itself.  They  are  thrust  away  and  kept 
aloof  from  the  communion  of  Christ,  for  reasons  that 
make  it  impossible  for  them  to  be  reliably  Christian. 
And  so  their  courage  is  broken  down,  and  all  their 
religious  longings  are  crippled,  just  when  they  most 
want  grace  and  sympathy  to  draw  them  on. 

The  remedy  is  plain.  In  the  first  place,  there  ought 
to  be  some  exercise  or  service  in  every  church,  to  which 
the  baptized  children  may  be  called,  in  common  with 
the  adult  members,  there  to  be  recognized  in  a  begun 
relationship.  They  should  be  formally  addressed  and 
prayed  with.  But  the  chief  exercise,  in  which  they 
can  as  heartily  partake  as  any,  should  be  the  singing 


310  THE    TREATMENT 

of  simple  "hymns  to  Christ,  sucli  as  are  nsed  by  tlie  Mo- 
ravian brethren  for  this  purpose.  In  this  manner,  too, 
they  will  quite  as  much  edify,  as  be  edified,  by  the 
adult  brethren.  Their  childish  sympathies  will,  in  this 
manner,  be  laid  hold  of  at  the  earliest  moment.  They 
will  perceive  that  so  much,  at  least,  of  worship  and 
religion  is  open  to  them  as  to  others,  and  will  begin  to 
feel  themselves  at  home  among  the  brethren. 

In  the  next  place,  there  should  be  some  arrangement, 
in  which  It  is  understood  that  children,  piously  dis- 
posed, though  not  confirmed  or  accepted  formally  as 
members  on  their  own  account,  may  be  allowed,  either 
on  consultation  with  the  pastor  or  without,  to  come  to 
the  Lord's  table  for  the  time,  on  the  score  of  their 
initial  membership  in  baptism,  and  their  hopefully  gra- 
cious character.  In  this  manner,  some  confidence  will 
be  shown  that  they  are  going  to  claim  their  place,  in. 
full  church  relations,  as  soon  as  they  are  better  matured 
in  character  and  evidences ;  and  this  kind  of  confidence 
will  have  great  power  with  them,  to  encourage  and  sup- 
port their  s.truggles,  and  help  them  forward  into  an 
established  Christian  life. 

And  then,  once  more,  no  child  should  ever  be  kept 
back  from  a  complete  and  formal,  or  formally  professed, 
membership  in  the  body  of  Christ,  simply  because  of 
his  age.  Some  children  will  give  more  reliable  evi- 
dence of  Christian  character  at  seven  years  of  age  than 
others  at  fourteen.  Were  every  thing  as  it  should  be, 
and  as  the  most  genuine  ideas  of  baptism  and  Christian 
nurture  suppose,  nearly  all  the  subjects  would  be  found 


THAT    DISCOURAGES    PIETY.  811 

ill  the  cliurcli,  as  brethren  accepted,  by  the  time  they 
are  twelve  years  old,  and  the  greater  part  of  them  be- 
fore they  are  ten  years  old. 

"While  the  church  cooperates,  in  this  manner,  cherish- 
ing the  baptized  children  as  her  own,  it  is  understood, 
of  course,  that  parents  are  to  be  engaged  in  putting 
forward  their  children  and  preparing  them  to  bear  the 
Christian  profession.  They  are  not  to  assume  that  the 
matter  of  true  prudence  here  is  all  on  one  side,  the  side 
of  detention;  as  if  there  were  nothing  to  be  sure  of 
but  that  their  children  do  not  get  on  too  fast.  If  that 
were  all,  it  were  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world  to  settle 
every  question,  by  the  argument  of  delay ;  which  neg- 
ative grace,  alas !  is  about  the  only  kind  of  function  some 
parents  are  equal  to.  Ko,  this  grip  of  detention  is  not 
any  so  easy  and  safe  kind  of  duty.  It  may  put  the 
child  by  his  time  for  life.  It  may  fatally  discourage  all 
his  beginnings  of  godliness,  and  may  so  far  choke  his 
growth  in  good  that  he  will  neVer  be  recovered. 

The  matters  which  I  have  gathered  up  in  this  dis- 
course, it  is  not  ,to  be  denied,  my  brethren,  i  make  a 
melancholy  picture.  When  we  discover  in  how  many 
ways  even  Christian  parents  themselves  discourage  the 
piety  of  their  children,  it  ceases  to  be  any  wonder  that 
they  so  often  turn  out  badly,  and  come  to  a  sad  figure 
in  their  life.  There  are  very  few  children  brought  up 
in  Christian  families,  who  do  not,  at  some  time,  show  a 
particular  openness  and  tenderness  to  the  calls  of  relig- 
ion.    These  flowering  times  of  piety,  ought  to  be  all 


312  THE    TREATMENT 

setting  times  of  fruit,  and  I  verily  believe  that  they 
would  be,  if  the  flowers  were  not  broken  off  by  some 
rough  handling,  or  discouraging  treatment.  And  it 
should  scarcely  be  any  wonder  that  so  many  children 
of  Christian  parents  come  forward  into  life,  in  a  dulled, 
uncling  mood ;  as  if  their  conscience  were  under  some 
paralysis,  or  as  if  they  had  somehow  fallen  out  of  all 
sense  and  sentiment  of  religion.  The  reason  is,  how 
often,  that  all  their  religious  affinities  have  been  bat- 
tered by  parental  discouragement.  They  think  of 
religion,  if  they  think  of  it  at  all,  only  as  a  kind  of 
forbidden  fruit ;  and  since  it  has  never  been  for  them, 
why  should  it  ever  be  ? 

Here,  too,  is  the  solution  of,  alas !  how  many  cases, 
where  Christian  parents  speak,  with  great  sadness,  of  a 
time  when  this  or  that  child,  now  utterly  submerged 
under  the  world,  or  the  world's  vices,  was  greatly  exer- 
cised in  matters  of  religion,  fond  of  prayer,  wanting 
even  to  be  admitted  to  Christ's  table.  How  many  chil- 
dren have  been  discouraged,  kept  back,  with  just  the 
same  effect !  Treated  as  if  their  piety  was  impossible, 
how  could  it  become  a  fact  ?  O,  if  they  had  been 
wisely  and  skillfully  encouraged,  assisted,  led  along, 
how  different  probably  the  state  and  character  in  which 
they  would  now  be  found  I 

A  heavy  shade  is  here  thrown,  too,  upon  all  those 
sorrowful  regrets  in  which  Christian  parents  bewail 
what  they  call  the  mystery  of  their  lot,  in  having  chil- 
dren grown  up  to  a  prayerless  and  godless  maturity. 
Alas  I  it  is  too  easy,  in  most  cases,  to  account  for  this 


THAT    DISCOUEAGES    PIETY.  313 

mystery.  When  we  see  in  how  many  ways  children 
may  be  thrown  off  from  the  courses  of  holy  obedience, 
or  discouraged  in  them,  we  have  a  strong  ground  of 
presumption  that  the  mystery  deplored  by  their  parents 
is  not  as  deep  as  they  suppose.  For  myself,  when  I 
look  over  this  field  of  misuse,  misconception,  misdirec- 
tion, seeing  in  how  many  and  subtle  ways  children  are 
turned  off  from  Christ,  when  they  might  be  and  ought 
to  be  drawn  to  his  fold,  it  is  no  longer  a  wonder  that 
they  go  astray ;  it  would  only  be  a  greater  wonder  if 
they  met  the  call  of  Christ  more  faithfully,  and  stood  in 
a  character  more  answerable  to  the  privilege  he  gives 

them. 

27 


V. 

FAMILY   GOVERNMENT. 

"  One  that  ruletli  well  his  own  house,  having  his  children  in  subjection 
with  all  gravity." — 1  Timothy^  iii.  4. 

To  BE  a  Christian  bishop,  whether  in  a  clergy  of  one 
order  or  of  three,  is  to  be  set  in  a  high  office,  demand- 
ing high  qualifications.  What  may  be  taken  as  quali- 
fications, the  apostle  is  here  specifying ;  and  among  the 
rest,  he  names  the  character  evinced  by  maintaining  a 
good  and  sound  government  in  the  house.  "For  if  a 
man  know  not  how  to  rule  his  own  house,  how  shall  he 
take  care  of  the  church  of  God?"  A  very  singular 
test,  in  one  view,  for  a  Christian  bishop ;  one  that  passes 
by  the  matter  of  learning  and  eloquence,  and  church 
reputation,  laying  hold,  instead,  of  a  gift  in  which  some 
very  ordinary  men,  and  not  a  few  ordinary  women, 
excel.  And  with  good  reason ;  for,  in  fact,  how  very 
much  alike,  in  the  elements  of  merit  and  success,  are 
all  that  purchase  to  themselves  a  good  degree,  in  what- 
ever rank,  or  sphere — alike  in  fidelity,  order,  patience, 
steadiness,  attention,  application  to  the  charge  that  is 
given  them.  N'ay,  when  the  apostle  drops  in  thought- 
fully what  he  takes  to  be  the  same  thing  in  effect,  as 
ruling  one's  house  well,  viz :  "  the  having  his  children 
in  subjection  with  all  gravity,"  the  words  themselves, 


FAMILY    GOVERNMENT.  315 

appear  to  have  a  sound  of  character  and  office  in  them, 
as  if  spoken  of  a  bishop  with  his  flock.  And  what 
indeed  is  the  house  but  a  little  primary  bishopric  under 
the  father,  taking  oversight  thereof? 

Family  Government,  then,  is  the  subject  here  sug- 
gested for  discussion.     And  we  naturally  endeavor — 

I.  To  ascertain  what  is  the  true  conception  of  family 
government. 

Of  course  it  is  to  be  government ;  about  that  there 
ought  to  be  no  hesitation.  It  is  not  to  be  a  mere  nurs- 
ing, or  dressing,  or  provisioning  agency ;  not  to  be  an 
exhorting,  advising,  consulting  relationship ;  not  to  be 
a  lavishing  of  devotion,  or  parental  self-sacrifice ;  but 
the  radical  constitutive  idea,  that  in  which  it  becomes 
family  government,  is  that  it  governs,  uses  authority, 
maintains  law  and  rules,  by  a  binding  and  loosing 
power,  over  the  moral  nature  of  the  child.  Parents,  it 
would  sometimes  appear,  fall  into  a  practical  ambiguity 
here — as  if  the  governing  power  were  a  kind  of  sever- 
ity, or  harsh  assumption ;  not  perceiving  that,  by  com- 
mon consent,  we  speak  of  an  ungoverned  family  as  the 
synonym  of  a  disorderly,  wretched,  and  dishonored,  if 
not  ruined,  family.  There  is  no  greater  cruelty,  in  fact, 
than  this  same  false  tenderness,  which  is  the  bane  of  so 
many  families.  There  is  a  kind  of  cruelty  indeed, 
which  is  exactly  opposite,  and  misses  the  idea  of  gov- 
ernment on  the  other  side,  viz:  that  brutish  manner 
of  despotic  will  and  violence,  which  makes  no  appeal 
to  the  moral  nature  at  all,  driving  straight  by,  upon  the 


316  FAMILY    GOVEKNMENT. 

fears,  in  a  battery  of  force.  And  yet,  whether  even 
this  be  really  more  cruel  in  its  effects,  than  the  false 
tenderness  just  named,  is  a  fair  subject  of  doubt.  The 
true  idea,  that  which  makes  the  domestic  order  and 
state  so  beneficent,  is  that  it  is  to  be  a  state  of  govern- 
ment ;  a  state  where  love  has  authority,  and  presides  in 
the  beneficent  order  of  law. 

But  when  we  have  reached  this  point,. that  family  gov- 
ernment is  to  govern,  we  shall  find  that  multitudes  of  pa- 
rents who  assume  the  Christian  name,  have  yet  no  practi- 
cal sense  of  the  intensely  religious  character  of  the  house, 
or  the  domestic  and  family  state.  They  go  into  their  of- 
fice loosely,  and  without  any  conception,  for  the  most 
part,  of  what  their  authority  means.  This,  I  will  now  un- 
dertake to  show,  drawing  out  especially  the  points  in  which 
they  most  commonly  seem  to  fall  below  the  real  sense  of 
their  office,  in  the  opinions  they  hold  concerning  it. 

First  of  all,  their  family  government  is  never  con- 
ceived, in  its  true  nature,  except  when  it  is  regarded  as 
a  vice-gerent  authority,  set  up  by  God,  and  ruling  in  his 
place.  Instead  of  creating  us  outright,  God  has  seen 
fit  to  give  us  existence  under  laws  of  reproduction ;  hav- 
ing it  for  his  object,  in  the  family  order  and  relation- 
ship, to  set  us  forth,  under  a  kind  of  experience  in  the 
small,  and  in  terms  of  sense,  that  faithfully  typifies  our 
wider  relationship  to  Him,  the  eternal  Father  and  in- 
visible Ruler  of  the  worlds.  We  are  infants  too,  men 
and  women  in  the  small,  that  we  may  be  as  flexible  in 
our  will  as  possible.  Our  parents,  if  they  are  godly 
themselves,  as  by  the  supposition  they  will  be,  are  to 


FAMILY    GOVERltMENT.  317 

personate  God,  in  the  double  sense  of  bearing  his  natu- 
ral and  moral  image  before  us,  ever  close  at  hand ;  and 
also  in  the  right  of  authority  with  which  they  are 
clothed.  And,  that  they  may  have  us  at  the  greatest 
advantage,  it  is  given  them  to  clothe  us,  and  feed  us, 
and  bathe  us,  day  and  night,  in  the  unsparing  and  lav- 
ish attentions  of  their  love;  enjoying  our  enjoyments, 
and  even  their  own  sacrifices  for  us.  First,  the  mother 
has  us,  at  her  bosom,  as  a  kind  of  nursing  Providence. 
Perused  by  touch  and  by  the  eyes,  her  soul  of  mater- 
nity, watching  for  that  look  and  bending  ever  to  it, 
raises  the  initial  sense  of  a  divine  something  in  the 
world  ;  and  when  she  begins  to  speak  her  soft  impera- 
tive, putting  a  little  decision  into  the  tones  of  her  love, 
she  makes  the  first  and  gentlest  possible  beginning  of 
authority.  And  then  the  stifFer  tension  of  the  mascu- 
line word,  connected  with  the  wider,  rougher  provi- 
dence of  a  father's  masculine  force,  follows  in  a  stouter 
mode  of  authority,  and  the  moral  nature  of  the  child, 
configured  thereto,  answers  faithfully  in  a  rapidly  de- 
veloped sense  of  obligation.  The  parents  are  to  fill,  in 
this  manner,  an  office  strictly  religious;  personating 
God  in  the  child's  feeling  and  conscience,  and  bending 
it,  thus,  to  what,  without  any  misnomer,  we  call  a  filial 
piety.  So  that  when  the  unseen  Father  and  Lord  is 
Himself  discovered,  there  is  to  be  a  piety  made  ready 
for  him ;  a  kind  of  house-religion,  that  m^ay  widen  out 
into  the  measures  of  God's  ideal  majesty  and  empire. 
Hence  the  injunction,  "Children  obey  your  parents  in 
the  Lord."     They  could  not  make  a  beginning  with 


318  FAMILY    GOVERNMENT. 

ideas  of  God,  or  with  God  as  an  -anseen  Spirit ;  there- 
fore they  had  parents  given  them  <in  the  Lord — the 
Lord  to  be  in  them,  there  to  personate  and  finite  him- 
self, and  gather  to  such  human  motherhood  and  father- 
hood, a  piety  transferable  to  Himself,  as  the  knowledge 
of  his  nobler,  unseen  Fatherhood  arrives. 

Again,  it  is  another  point,  very  commonly  over- 
looked, or  forgotten,  that  parental  government  is  genu- 
ine, only  as  it  bears  rule  for  the  same  ends  that  God 
Himself  pursues,  in  the  religious  order  of  the  world. 
True  family  government  will  be  just  as  religious  as  His, 
neither  more  nor  less.  It  will  have  exactly  the  same  ends 
and  no  other.  Just  here,  accordingly,  is  the  main  root  of 
mischief  and  failure  in  the  government  of  Christian  fam- 
ilies. The  parents  are  not  Christian  enough  to  think  of 
bearing  rule  for  strictly  Christian  ends.  They  drop  into 
a  careless,  irresponsible  way,  and  rule  for  any  thing  that 
happens  to  chime  with  their  own  feeling  or  conven- 
ience. They  want  their  children  to  shine,  or  be  honor- 
able, or  rich,  or  brave,  or  fashionable ;  so  to  serve  them- 
selves in  them,  or  their  pride,  or  their  mere  natural 
fondness.  They  bring  in,  thus,  bad  motives  to  corrupt 
all  government,  and  even  to  corrupt  themselves.  If 
they  have  some  care  of  piety  in  their  government,  it  is 
a  kind  of  amphibious  care,  sometimes  in  one  element 
and  sometimes  in  another.  They  are  never  truly  and 
heartily  in  God's  ends.  And  the  result  is  that  what 
they  do  in  the  name  of  religion,  or  to  inculcate  religion, 
shows  their  want  of  appetite,  and  has  really  no  effect 
but  to  make  both  God's  authority  and  theirs  irksome. 


FAMILY    GOVERNMENT.  819 

Nothing  answers  the  true  purpose  here,  but  to  bring  in 
all  the  noblest  ideas  of  truth,  and  forgiveness  and  self- 
sacrifice,  and  assert  a  pitch  of  virtue  in  the  house  high 
enough  to  be  inspiring.  The  government  will  then 
have  a  genuine  authority  and  power,  because  the  rule 
of  God  is  in  it.  As  it  rules  for  God,  and  with  God, 
God  will  be  in  it ;  otherwise  it  is  mortal  self-assertion 
only. 

Closely  related  is  the  conviction  to  be  firmly  held, 
that  family  discipline,  rightly  administered,  is  to 
secure,  and  may  secure,  a  style  of  obedience  in  the 
child  that  amounts  to  a  real  piety.  If  we  speak 
of  conversion,  family  government  should  be  a  con- 
verting ordinance,  as  truly  as  preaching.  For  ob- 
serve and  make  due  account  of  this  single  fact,  that 
when  a  child  is  brought  to  do  any  one  thing  from  a 
truly  right  motive,  and  in  a  genuinely  right  spirit,  there 
is  implied  in  that  kind  of  obedience,  the  acceptance  of 
all  best  and  holiest  principle.  I  do  not  mean,  of  course, 
that  children  are  to  be  made  Christians  by  the  rod,  or 
by  any  summary  process  of  requirement.  There  is  no 
such  short  method  of  compulsory  piety  here,  as  some 
are  reported  to  have  held,  or  put  in  exercise.  But  it  is 
not  absurd  to  expect  and  aim  to  realize  in  the  family,  a 
genuine  spirit  of  obedience;  obedience,  that  is,  from 
the  principle  that  God  enthrones,  and  which  underlies 
all  piety — just  what  the  apostle  means,  if  I  understand 
him  rightly,  by  having  children  "in  subjection  with  all 
gravity."  In  the  phrase  "  all  gravity,'*  he  is  looking  at 
a  kind  of  obedience   that  touches  the  deepest  notes 


320  FAMILY    GOVERNMENT. 

of  principle  and  character.  Contrary  to  tMs,  tliere  is 
an  obedience  without  principle,  which  is  obedience  with 
all  levity ;  that  which  is  paid  to  mere  will  and  force ; 
that  which  is  another  name  for  fear;  that  which  is 
bought  by  promises  and  paid  by  indulgences ;  that 
which  makes  a  time-server,  or  a  coward,  or  a  lying  pre- 
tender, as  the  case  may  be,  and  not  a  Christian.  This 
latter — that  which  makes  a  Christian — is  the  aim  of  all 
true  government,  and  should  never  be  out  of  sight  for 
an  hour.  Let  the  child  be  brought  to  do  right  because 
it  is  right,  and  not  because  it  is  unsafe,  or  appears 
badly,  to  do  wrong.  In  every  case  of  discipline  for 
ill-nature,  wrong,  willfulness,  disobedience,  be  it  under- 
stood, that  the  real  pomt  is  carried  never  till  the  child 
is  gentled  into  love  and  duty ;  sorry,  in  all  heartiness, 
for  the  past,  with  a  glad  mind  set  to  the  choice  of  doing 
right  and  pleasing  God.  How  often  is  it  true  that  in 
the  successful  carrying  of  such  a  point,  (which  can  not 
be  carried,  save  by  great  resources  of  love  and  gospel 
life  in  the  parents,)  the  fact  of  a  converted  will  is  gained. 
And  one  must  be  a  dull  observer  of  children  and  their 
after  life,  who  has  not  many  times  suspected  that  just 
the  ones  who  are  said  to  be  converted  afterwards,  and 
suppose  themselves  to  be,  had  their  wills,  not  seldom 
bowed  to  this  in  their  childhood,  under  the  government 
of  the  house. 

Having  so  far  indicated  what  is  the  true  idea  of  fam- 
ily government  as  a  Divine  institution,  let  us  next 
inquire  — 


FAMILY    GOVERNMENT.  821 

II.  By  what  methods  it  will  best  fulfill  its  gracious  and 
beneficent  purposes  ? 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  the  vice-gerent 
office  to  be  maintained,  and  the  gracious  ends  to  be  se- 
cured, make  it  indispensable  that  parents  should  them- 
selves be  living  in  the  Spirit,  and  be  so  tempered  by 
their  faithful  walk,  as  to  have  the  Christly  character  on 
them.  Nothing  but  this  will  so  lift  their  aims,  gentle 
their  passions,  steady  their  measures  and  proceedings, 
as  to  give  them  that  personal  authority  which  is  requi- 
site. For  this  authority  of  which  I  speak  supposes 
much — so  much  of  grace  and  piety,  that  God  is  ex- 
pressed in  the  life ;  so  much  as  to  even  it  in  all  princi- 
ple, fasten  it  in  all  moderation  of  truth  and  justice, 
gladden  it  in  heaven's  liberty  and  peace,  and,  above  all, 
clear  it  of  sanctimony;  for  if  any  thing  will  drive  a 
poor  child  mad  with  disgust  of  religion,  it  is  to  be  tor- 
mented day  and  night  with  the  drawlings  and  mock 
solemnities  of  a  merely  sanctimonious  piety.  Children 
love  the  realities,  and  are  worried  by  all  shams  of  char- 
acter. If  then  parents  can  not  be  deep  enough  in 
religion  to  live  it  naturally,  and  have  it  as  an  element 
of  gladness,  clear  of  all  sanctimony,  it  is  doubtful 
whether  they  might  not  better  be  even  farther  off  from 
the  semblance  of  it  than  they  pretend  to  be.  Of  this 
one  thing  they  may  be  sure,  that  they  get  no  addition 
of  personal  authority  by  any  thing  put  on ;  or  by  any 
prescribed  longitudes  of  expression.  The  most  pro- 
foundly real  thing  in  the  world  is  this  matter  of  per- 
sonal authority.     Jesus  had  it  as  no  other  ever  had, 


322  FAMILY    GOVERNMENT. 

because  lie  had  most  of  reality  and  divine  truth  in  his 
character ;  we  shall  have  the  same  only  as  we  have  the 
same  steady  affinities  in  us.  and  the  same  Spirit  without 
measure  upon  us. 

There  is  also  another  precondition  of  authority  in 
parents  closely  related  to  this ;  I  mean  that  they  be  so 
far  entered  into  the  Christian  order  of  marriage,  as  to 
fulfill  gracefully  what  belongs  to  the  relation  in  which 
they  are  set,  and  show  them  to  the  children  as  do- 
ing fit  honor  to  each  other.  By  a  defect  just  here,  all 
authority  in  the  house  is  blasted.  Thus  Dr.  Tiersch,  in 
his  excellent  little  treatise  on  the  Christian  Family  Life, 
says : — "  A  wife  can  not  weaken  the  authority  of  the 
father  without  undermining  her  own,  for  her  authority 
rests  upon  his,  and  if  that  of  the  mother  is  subordinated 
to  that  of  the  father,  yet  it  is  but  one  authority,  which 
can  not  be  weakened  in  either  of  the  two  who  bear  it, 
without  injury  to  both.  The  mother,  therefore,  must 
consider  it  a  matter  of  family  decorum  which  is  not  to 
be  broken,  never  even  in  little  matters  to  contradict  the 
father  in  the  presence  of  the  children,  except  with  the 
reservation  of  a  modest  admission  of  his  right  of  de- 
cision, and  that  in  cases  which  admit  of  no  delay.  But 
just  as  much  is  it  the  duty  of  the  husband  to  leave  the 
authority  of  his  wife  unassailed  in  the  presence  of  other 
members  of  the  household ;  and  when  he  is  obliged  to 
overrule  her  objections,  to  do  it  in  a  tender  and  kindly 
form.  If  he  turns  to  her  with  roughness  and  harshness 
from  jealousy  of  his  place  of  rule,  it  is  not  only  the 
heart  of  his  wife  which  is  estranged  from  him,  with  the 


FAMILY    GOVERNMENT.  323 

children  too  intervenes  a  weakening  of  the  moral  power, 
under  which  they  should  feel  themselves  placed.  If  in 
their  presence  their  mother  is  blamed  as  foolish  or  ob- 
stinate, and  so  lowered  to  the  place  of  a  child  or  a  maid- 
servant, that  sanctity  immediately  vanishes,  which,  in 
the  eyes  of  the  children,  surrounds  the  heads  of  both 
father  and  mother  in  common."* 

Again  it  is  of  the  highest  importance  in  family  gov- 
ernment, that  parents  understand  how  early  it  be- 
gins— how  easily,  in  fact,  the  great  question  of  rule  and 
obedience  may  be  settled,  or  well-nigh  settled,  before 
the  time  of  verbal  order  and  commandment  arrives. 
Thus  there  is  what  may  be  fitly  called  a  Christian 
handling  for  the  infant  state,  that  makes  a  most  solid 
beginning  of  government.  It  is  the  even  handling  of 
repose  and  gentle  affection,  which  lays  a  child  down  to 
its  sleep  so  firmly,  that  it  goes  to  sleep  as  in  duty  bound ; 
which  teaches  it  to  feed  when  food  is  wanted,  not  when 
it  can  be  somehow  made  uneasy,  or  the  mother  is  uneasy 
for  it ;  which  refuses  to  wear  out  the  night  in  laborious 
caresses  and  coaxings,  that  only  reward  the  cries  they 
endeavor  to  compose ;  which  places  the  child  so  firmly, 
makes  so  little  of  the  protests  of  caprice  in  it,  wears  a 
look  so  gentle  and  loving,  and  goes  on  with  such  even- 
ness of  system,  that  the  child  feels  itself  to  be,  all  the 
while,  in  another  will,  and  that  a  good  will ;  consent- 
ing thus  by  habit  and  quietly  to  be  lapped  in  authority, 
just  as  it  consents  to  breathe  in  the  lap  of  nature  and 
her  atmospheric  laws.     And  so  it  becomes  a  thoroughly 

*  Page  99. 


824  FAMILY    GOVERNMENT. 

governed  creature,  under  the  mere  handling  of  its  in- 
fantile age.  Neither  should  it  seem  that  this  is,  in  any 
sense,  an  exaggeration.  For  though  the  government 
we  speak  of  here  is  silent,  and  utters  for  the  time.no 
law,  there  still  is  law  enough  revealed  to  feeling 
in  the  mere  motions  and  modes  of  the  house.  Who  is 
ignorant  that  by  jerks  of  passion,  flashes  of  irritation, 
unsteady  changes  of  caprice  and  nervousness,  fits  of 
self-indulgence,  disgusts  with  self  and  life  that  are 
half  the  time  allowed  to  include  the  child,  songs  and 
caresses  both  of  day  and  night,  that  are  volunteered  as 
much  to  compose  the  mother's  or  the  nurse's  impa- 
tience as  the  child's — who  is  ignorant  that  an  infant, 
handled  in  this  manner,  may  be  kept  in  a  continual  fret 
of  torment  and  ill-nature.  Meantime  there  is,  just  op- 
posite, what  a  beautiful  power  of  order,  and  quiet,  and 
happy  rule,  when  the  motions  and  modes  of  the  hand- 
ling are  such  as  token  peace,  repose,  firmness,  system, 
confidence,  and  a  steady  all-encompassing  love.  Here 
is  law,  felt,  we  may  even  say,  in  every  touch,  entered 
into  every  sensational  experience,  confided  in,  submit- 
ted to,  with  all  gravity.  So  that  when  the  time  of 
words  arrives,  the  child  is  already  under  government, 
and  the  question  of  obedience  and  order  is  already  half 
settled.  • 

We  come  now  to  the  age  of  language,  or  the  age 
when  words  begin  to  be  used  to  express  requirement 
and  authority.  Indeed  this  will  be  done,  assisted  by 
tones  and  signs  of  manner,  even  before  the  child  itself 
is  able  to  speak. 


FAMILY    GOVERNMENT.  325 

And  here  it  is  to  be  noted  that  much  depends  upon 
the  tone  of  command,  or  the  kinds  of  emphasis  em- 
ployed. It  is  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that  what  will 
make  a  child  stare,  or  tremble,  impresses  more  author- 
ity. The  violent  emphasis,  the  hard,  stormy  voice,  the 
menacing  air,  only  weakens  authority ;  it  commands  a 
good  thing  as  if  it  were  only  a  bad,  and  fit  to  be  no 
way  impressed,  save  by  some  stress  of  assumption.  Let 
the  command  be  always  given  quietly,  as  if  it  had  some 
right  in  itself,  and  could  utter  itself  to  the  conscience 
by  some  emphasis  of  its  own.  Is  it  not  well  understood 
that  a  bawling  and  violent  teamster  has  no  real  govern- 
ment of  his  team?  Is  it  not  practically  seen  that  a 
skillful  commander  of  one  of  those  huge  floating  cities, 
moved  by  steam  on  our  American  waters,  manages  and 
works  every  motion  by  the  waving  of  a  hand,  or  by 
signs  that  pass  in  silence ;  issuing  no  order  at  all,  save 
in  the  gentlest  undertone  of  voice  ?  So  when  there  is, 
or  is  to  be,  a  real  order  and  law  in  the  house,  it  will 
come  of  no  hard  and  boisterous,  or  fretful  and  terma- 
gant way  of  commandment.  Gentleness  will  speak  the 
word  of  firmness,  and  firmness  will  be  clothed  in  the 
airs  of  true  gentleness. 

Nor  let  any  one  think  that  such  kind  of  authority 
is  going  to  be  disrespected,  or  disregarded,  because  it 
moves  no  fright  or  fear  in  the  subjects.  That  will 
depend  on  the  fidelity  of  the  parent  to  what  he  has 
commanded.  How  many  do  we  see,  who  fairly  rave  in 
authority,  and  keep  the  tempest  up  from  morning  to 
night,  who  never  stop  to  see  whether  any  thing  they 

28 


826  FAMILY     GOVEKNMENT. 

forbid  or  command  is,  in  fact,  observed.  Indeed  tbey 
really  forget  wliat  they  have  commanded.  Their  man- 
dates follow  so  thickly  as  to  crowd  one  another,  and 
even  to  successively  thrust  one  another  out  of  remem- 
brance. And  the  result  is  that,  by  this  cannonading 
of  pop-guns,  the  successive  pellets  of  commandment 
are  in  turn  all  blown  away.  If  any  thing  is  fit  to  be 
forbidden,  or  commanded,  it  is  fit  to  be  watched  and 
held  in  faithful  account.  On  this  it  is  that  the  real  em- 
phasis of  authority  depends,  not  on  the  wind-stress  of 
the  utterance.  Let  there  be  only  such  and  so  many 
things  commanded,  as  can  be  faithfully  attended  to — 
these  in  a  gentle  and  firm  voice,  as  if  their  title  to 
obedience  lay  in  their  own  merit — and  then  let  the  child 
be  held  to  a  perfectly  inevitable  and  faithful  account ; 
and,  by  that  time,  it  will  be  seen  that  order  and  law 
have  a  stress  of  their  own,  and  a  power  to  rule  in  their 
own  divine  right.  The  beauty  of  a  well-governed 
family  will  be  seen,  in  this  manner,  to  be  a  kind  of 
silent,  natural-looking  power;  as  if  it  were  a  matter 
only  of  growth,  and  could  never  have  been  otherwise. 

At  first,  or  in  the  earlier  periods  of  childhood,  au- 
thority should  rest  upon  its  own  right,  and  expect  to  be 
obeyed  just  because  it  speaks.  It  should  stake  itself 
on  no  assigned  reasons,  and  have  nothing  to  do  with 
reasons,  unless  it  be  after  the  fact ;  when,  by  showing 
what  has  been  depending,  in  a  manner  unseen  to  the 
child,  it  can  add  a  presumption  of  reason  to  all  future 
commands.  It  is  even  a  good  thing  to  the  moral  and 
religious  nature  of  a  child,  to  have  its  obedience  re- 


FAMILY    GOVERNMENT.  827 

quired,  and  to  be  accustomed  to  obedience,  on  the 
ground  of  simple  authority ;  to  learn  homage  and 
trust,  as  all  subject  natures  must,  and  so  to  accept  the 
rule  of  God's  majesty,  when  the  reasons  of  God  are  in- 
scrutable. There  is  little  prospect  that  any  child  will 
be  a  Christian,  or  any  thing  but  a  skeptic,  or  a  godless 
worldling,  who  has  not  had  his  religious  nature  un 
folded  by  an  early  subjection  to  authority,  speaking  in 
its  own  right. 

Nay,  I  will  go  farther ;  there  is  a  certain  use  in  hav- 
ing a  child,  in  the  first  stages  of  government,  feel  the 
pressure  of  law  as  a  restriction.  For,  as  the  law  of 
God  is  a  schoolmaster  to  bring  us  to  Christ,  so  there  is 
a  like  relation  between  law  and  liberty  in  the  training 
of  the  house.  It  is  by  a  certain  friction,  if  I  may  so 
speak,  on  the  moral  nature,  a  certain  pressure  of  con- 
trol, not  always  welcome,  that  the  sense  of  law  gets  hold 
of  us.  Observances  that  we  do  not  like,  prepare  us  to 
a  kind  of  obedience,  further  on,  that  is  free — that  wel- 
comes the  same  command  because  it  is  good,  the  same 
authority  because  it  is  wholesome  and  right.  And  so 
it  comes  to  pass  that  a  son,  grown  almost  to  manhood, 
will  gladly  serve  the  house,  and  yield  to  his  parents  a 
kind  of  homage  that  even  anticipates  their  wishes,  just 
because  he  has  learned  to  be  in  subjection,  with  all 
gravity,  under  restrictions  that  were  once  a  sore  limit 
on  his  patience. 

At  the  same  time  it  should  never  be  forgotten,  in 
this  due  assertion  of  authority  and  restrictive  law,  that 
there  is  a  great  difference  between  the  imperative  and 


328  FAMILY    GOVERNMENT. 

the  dictatorial ;  between  the  exact  and  the  exacting.  I 
have  spoken  already  of  the  common  fault  of  command- 
ing overmuch,  and  forgetting  or  omitting  to  enforce 
what  is  commanded ;  there  is  another  kind  of  fault 
which  commands  overmuch,  and  rigidly  exacts  what  is 
commanded ;  laying  on  commands,  as  it  seems  to  the 
child,  just  because  it  can,  or  is  willing  to  gall  his  peace 
by  exacting  something  that  shall  cut  away  even  the 
semblance  of  liberty.  No  parent  has  a  right  to  put 
oppression  on  a  child,  in  the  name  of  authority.  And 
if  he  uses  authority  in  that  way,  to  annoy  the  child's 
peace,  and  even  to  forbid  his  possession  of  himself,  he 
should  not  complain,  if  the  impatience  he  creates  grows 
into  a  bitter  animosity,  and  finally  a  stiff  rebellion. 
Kothing  should  ever  be  commanded  except  what  is 
needed  and  required  by  the  most  positive  reasons, 
whether  those  reasons  are  made  known  or  not. 

Another  qualification  here  to  be  observed,  belongs 
to  what  may  be  called  the  emancipation  of  the  child. 
A  wise  parent  understands  that  his  government  is  to 
be  crowned  by  an  act  of  emancipation ;  and  it  is  a 
great  problem,  to  accomplish  that  emancipation  grace- 
fully. Pure  authority,  up  to  the  last  limit  of  minority, 
then  a  total,  instantaneous  self-possession,  makes  an 
awkward  transition.  A  young  eagle  kept  in  the  nest 
and  brooded  over  till  his  beak  and  talons  are  full- 
grown,  then  pitched  out  of  it  and  required  to  take  care 
of  himself,  will  most  certainly  be  dashed  upon  the 
ground.  The  emancipating  process,  in  order  to  be  well 
finished,  should  begin  early,  and  should  pass  imper- 


FAMILY    GOVERNMENT.  329 

ceptiblj,  even  as  age  increases  imperceptibly.  Thus 
the  child,  after  being  ruled  for  a  time,  by  pure  au- 
thority, should  begin,  as  the  understanding  is  developed, 
to  have  some  of  the  reasons  given  why  it  is  required  to 
abstain,  or  do,  or  practice,  in  this  or  that  way  instead 
of  some  other.  The  tastes  of  the  child,  too,  should 
begin  to  be  a  little  consulted,  in  respect  to  his  school, 
his  studies,  his  future  engagements  in  life.  When  he  is 
old  enough  to  go  on  errands,  and  to  labor  in  various 
employments  for  the  benefit  of  the  family,  he  should  be 
let  into  the  condition  of  the  family  far  enough  to  be 
identified  with  it,  and  have  the  family  cause,  and  pro- 
perty, and  hope,  for  his  own.  Built  into  the  family 
fortunes  and  sympathies,  in  this  manner,  he  will  begin, 
at  a  very  early  day,  to  command  himself  for  it,  and  so 
will  get  ready  to  command  himself  for  himself,  in  a 
way  that  will  be  just  as  if  the  parental  authority  were 
still  running  on,  after  it  has  quite  run  by. 

Is  it  necessary  to  add  that  a  parent  who  governs  at 
the  point  of  authority  will  not,  of  course,  allow  himself 
to  be  known  only  as  a  bundle  of  commandments  ?  In 
order  to  have  authority,  he  must  have  life,  sympathy, 
feeling  unbent  in  play.  He  must  connect  a  gospel  with 
his  law,  and  so  instead  of  being  a  law  over  the  house, 
he  must  undertake  to  be  a  law  written  in  the  heart ; 
winning  love  as  commanding  out  of  love,  consumma- 
ting obedience,  by  the  glad  and  joyous  element  in 
which  he  bathes  the  playful  homage  and  trust  of  his 
children. 

As  to  the  motives  addressed  by  family  government, 


380"  FAMILY    GOVEBNMENT. 

in  a  way  of  maintaining  or  securing  obedience,  they 
need  to  be  of  two  kinds ;  such  as  belong  to  a  character 
in  principle,  and  such  as  belong  to  a  character  that  is 
equivocal  in  it,  or  fallen  below  it.  The  first  kind 
should  never  be  left  out  of  sight.  They  are  such  as 
these :  doing  right  because  it  is  right ;  loving  God  be- 
cause he  loves  the  right ;  God's  approbation ;  the  ap- 
probation of  a  good  conscience ;  the  sense  of  honor 
with  himself,  as  opposed  to  the  meanness  of  lying  and 
deceit.  These  are,  by  distinction,  the  religious  motives*; 
and  where  these  are  completely  ignored,  all  others  are 
radically  faulty,  of  course.  But  there  is,  beside,  a  very 
great  and  hurtful  mistake  that  is  commonly  made  in 
choosing,  from  among  the  lower  and  second-class  mo- 
tives, those  which  are  really  most  questionable,  and 
most  likely  to  be  followed  by  sinister  effects.  Here 
again  we  are  to  follow  God,  who  undertakes  to  dislodge 
us,  in  the  plane  below  principle,  or  keep  us  from  set- 
tling into  it,  by  raking  it,  every  way,  in  a  cannonade 
of  penalty  and  fear.  ISTo,  say  the  plausible  sophisters 
of  our  day,  in  what  they  take  to  be  its  better  wisdom, 
fear  is  a  mean  and  servile  motive ;  we  will  not  make 
cowards  of  our  children.  They  do  not  observe  the 
very  considerable  distinction  between  terror  and  fear ; 
that  terror  lays  hold  of  passion,  fear  of  intelligence ; 
that  one  dispossesses  the  soul,  the  other  nerves  it  to  a 
wise  and  rational  prudence ;  that  one  scatters  all  dis- 
tinctions of  principle,  and  the  other  turns  the  soul 
thoughtfully  towards  principle.  Missing  this  distinc- 
tion, they  make  their  appeal  sometimes  to  the  sense  of 


FAMILY    GOVERNMENT.  331 

honor  before  men,  frequently  to  the  sense  of  appear- 
ance, or  to  what  will  be  the  appearance  of  the  famil}^, 
not  less  frequently  to  the  desire  of  success  in  life; 
praising  the  shows  of  bravery  and  spirit,  deifying,  so  to 
speak,  human  conventionalities  and  laws  of  fashion. 
They  do  not  see  the  total  want  of  dignity  in  these  ap- 
peals ;  how  they  all  put  shams  and  shows,  and  falsities, 
in  the  place  of  solid  realities ;  how  they  sort  with  all 
lying  semblances  of  virtue,  run  the  soul  into  all  most 
cowardly  fictions  of  time-serving,  pretense,  hypocrisy, 
sj'Cophancy,  and  make  even  hollowness  itself  the  prin- 
cipal substance  of  life.  Therefore  it  is  that  God  ap- 
peals to  fear,  backs  authority  and  law  by  penalties  that 
waken  fear ;  because  this  one  prudential  motive  has  a 
place  by  itself,  in  not  being  positive  or  acquisitive,  in 
any  sense,  but  only  negative ;  and  so  far  has  the  sem- 
blance of  unselfishness.  It  makes  no  one  selfish  to 
fear,  though  fear,  as  a  motive,  is  not  up  to  the  level  of 
principle  loved  for  its  own  sake.  The  wise  parent, 
therefore,  will  not  be  wiser  than  God  ;  and  wheresoever 
fear  is  needed,  he  will  speak  to  fear,  and  make  as  little 
as  possible  of  appearance,  popularity,  and  opinion,  un- 
derstanding that,  if  he  is  to  have  his  children  in  sub- 
jection with  all  gravity,  they  must  be  brought  into 
God's  principle,  by  a  motive  that  is  unambitious,  un- 
worldly and  real,  and  turns  the  soul  away  by  no  com- 
putations of  pride  and  airy  pretense. 

There  is,  then,  to  be  such  a  thing  as  penalty,  or  pun- 
ishment, in  the  government  of  the  house.  And  here 
again  is  a  place  where  large  consideration  is  requisite. 


332  FAMILY    GOVEENMENT. 

First  of  all,  it  should  be  threatened  as  seldom  as  possi- 
ble, and  next  as  seldom  executed  as  possible.  It  is  a 
most  wretched  and  coarse  barbarity  that  turns  the  house 
into  a  penitentiary,  or  house  of  correction.  Where  the 
management  is  right  in  other  respects,  punishment  will 
be  very  seldom  needed.  And  those  parents  who  make 
it  a  point  of  fidelity,  that  they  keep  the  flail  of  chas- 
tisement always  a  going,  have  a  better  title  to  the  bas- 
tinado themselves  than  to  any  Christian  congratula- 
tions. The  punishments  dispensed  should  never  be 
such  as  have  a  character  of  ignominy  ;  and  therefore, 
except  in  cases  of  really  ignominious  wickedness,  it 
would  be  better  to  avoid,  as  far  as  may  be,  the  infliction 
of  pain  upon  the  person.  For  the  same  reason  the 
discipline  should,  if  possible,  be  entirely  private;  a 
matter  between  the  parent  and  child.  Thus  it  is  well 
said  by  Dr.  Tiersch,  "  If  ever  a  severe  punishment  is 
necessary,  it  must  be  carried  out  so  as  to  spare  the 
child's  self-respect ;  not  in  the  presence  of  his  brothers 
and  sisters,  nor  of  the  servants.  For  a  wholesome  ter- 
ror to  the  others,  it  is  enough  if  they  perceive,  at  a  dis- 
tance, something  of  that  which  happens.  And  if  only 
the  smallest  triumph  over  his  misfortune,  the  least  de- 
gree of  mockery  arise,  bitterness  and  a  loss  of  self- 
respect  are  the  consequences  to  the  child."* 

Punishments  should  be  severe  enough  to  serve  their 
purpose ;  and  gentle  enough  to  show,  if  possible,  a  ten- 
derness that  is  averse  from  the  infliction.  There  is  no 
abuse  more  shocking,  than  when  they  are  administered 

*  Page  153. 


FAMILY    GOVERNMENT.  333 

by  sheer  impatience,  or  in  a  fit  of  passion.  Nor  is  the 
case  at  all  softened,  wlien  they  are  administered  without 
feeling,  in  a  manner  of  uncaring  hardness.  Whenever 
the  sad  necessity  arrives,  there  should  be  time  enough 
taken,  after  the  wrong  or  detection,  to  produce  a  calm 
and  thoughtful  revision;  and  a  just  concern  for  the 
wrong,  as  evinced  by  the  parent,  should  be  wakened, 
if  possible,  in  the  child.  I  would  not  be  understood, 
however,  in  advising  this  more  tardy  and  delicate  way 
of  proceeding,  to  justify  no  exceptions.  There  are 
cases,  now  and  then,  in  the  outrageous  and  shocking 
misconduct  of  some  boy,  where  an  explosion  is  wanted ; 
where  the  father  represents  God  best,  by  some  terrible 
outburst  of  indignant  violated  feeling,  and  becomes  an 
instant  avenger,  without  any  counsel  or  preparation 
whatever.  Nothing  else  expresses  fitly  what  is  due  to 
such  kind  of  conduct.  And  there  is  many  a  grown  up 
man,  who  will  remember  such  an  hour  of  discipline,  as 
the  time  when  the  ploughshare  of  God's  truth  went 
into  his  soul  like  redemption  itself.  That  was  the 
shock  that  woke  him  up  to  the  staunch  realities  of  prin- 
ciple ;  and  he  will  recollect  that  father,  as  God's  minis- 
ter, typified  to  all  dearest,  holiest,  reverence,  by  the 
pungent  indignations  of  that  time. 

There  is  great  importance  in  the  closing  of  a  penal 
discipline.  Thus  it  should  be  a  law  never  to  cease  from 
the  discipline  begun,  whatever  it  be,  till  the  child  is  seen 
to  be  in  a  feeling  that  justifies  the  discipline.  He  is  never 
to  be  let  go,  or  sent  away,  sulking,  in  a  look  of  willful- 
ness unsubdued.     Indeed,  he  should  even  be  required 


334  FAMILY    GOVERNMENT. 

always  to  put  on  a  pleasant,  tender  look,  such  as  clears 
all  clouds  and  shows  a  beginning  of  fair  weather.  No 
reproof,  or  discipline,  is  rightly  administered  till  this 
point  is  reached.  Nothing  short  of  this  changed  look 
gives  any  hope  of  a  changed  will.  On  the  other  hand, 
when  the  face  of  disobedience  brightens  out  into  this 
loving  and  dutiful  expression,  it  not  only  shows  that  the 
malice  of  wrong  is  gone  by,  but,  possibly,  that  there  is 
entered  into  the  heart  some  real  beginning  of  right, 
some  spirit  of  really  Christian  obedience.  Many  a 
child  is  bowed  to  holy  principle  itself,  at  the  happy  and 
successful  close  of  what,  to  human  eyes,  is  only  a 
chapter  of  discipline. 

In  order  to  realize  this  Christian  issue  of  discipline, 
it  is  sometimes  recommended  that  the  child  should  be 
first  prayed  with,  and  made  conscious,  in  that  manner, 
of  his  own  wrong,  as  before  God,  and  of  the  truly  relig- 
ious intentions  by  which  the  parent  is  actuated.  No 
rule  of  this  kind  can  be  safely  given ;  for  there  is  great 
danger  that  the  child  will  begin  to  associate  prayer  and 
religion  with  his  pains  of  discipline ;  than  which  noth- 
ing could  be  more  hurtful.  It  would  be  far  better,  in 
most  cases,  if  the  prayer  were  to  follow,  coming  in  to 
express  and  gladden  his  already  glad  repentances. 

There  are  many  things  remaining  still  to  be  said,  in 
order  to  a  complete  view  of  the  subject ;  but  there  are 
two  simple  cautions  that  must  not  be  omitted,  and  with 
these  I  close — 

1.  Observe  that  great  care  is  needed  in  the  processes 


FAMILY    GOVERNMENT.  835 

of  detection,  or  the  police  of  discovery.  The  child 
must  not  be  allowed  to  go  on  breaking  through  the 
orders  imposed,  or  into  the  ways  of  vice,  not  detected. 
This  will  make  his  life  a  practice  in  art  and  hypocrisy ; 
and  what  is  worse,  will  make  him  also  confident  of  suc- 
cess in  the  same.  Nothing  will  corrupt  his  moral  na- 
ture more  rapidly.  There  must  be  a  very  close  and 
careful  watch  on  the  part  of  fathers  and  mothers,  to  let 
no  deviation  of  childhood  pass  their  discovery.  And 
then,  again,  the  greatest  care  and  address  will  be  needed, 
to  keep  their  circumspection  from  taking  on  the  look 
of  a  deliberate  espionage,  than  which  nothing  will  more 
certainly  alienate  the  confidence  and  love  needful  to 
their  just  authority.  Nothing  wounds  a  child  more 
fatally,  than  to  see  he  is  not  trusted.  Under  such 
an  impression,  he  will  soon  become  as  unworthy  of 
trust  as  he  has  been  taken  to  be.  On  the  other  hand, 
he  will  naturally  want  to  be  worthy  of  the  trust  he  re- 
ceives. For  the  same  reason,  he  should  never  be  set 
upon  by  volunteer  charges,  or  accusations  which  have 
no  other  merit  than  to  be  the  ground  of  a  cross-ques- 
tioning process.  It  is  a  harsh  experiment  that  insults  a 
child,  in  order  to  find  out  whether  he  is  innocent  or 
guilty.  Besides,  if  he  is  guilty,  there  is  no  small  risk 
of  drawing  him  on  to  asseverations  of  innocence,  that 
will  fatally  break  down  his  truthfulness.  Neither  will 
it  answer,  in  the  case  of  little  children,  to  make  them 
reporters  of  their  own  wrongs,  by  allowing  the  under- 
standing that  they  shall  so  obtain  pardon.  For  then 
they  are  only  trained  to  a  manner  of  sycophancy  that 


SB6  FAMILY    GOVERNMENT. 

mocks  all  government.  Wliat  then  shall  be  done? 
First  of  all,  make  much  of  the  fact,  that  when  a  child 
is  doing  any  secret  wrong,  he  grows  shy,  ceases  to  be 
confiding  and  demonstrative,  even  as  Adam,  when  he 
hid  himself  among  the  trees.  Then  let  the  watch  grow 
close — watch  his  companions,  the  way  he  goes,  the  way 
he  returns,  his  times,  what  he  says,  and  what  he  par- 
ticularly avoids  speaking  of  at  all ;  speak  of  his  shyness, 
and  observe  the  reasons  he  assigns,  question  his  reasons. 
*It  will  be  difiicult  for  any  young  child  to  escape  this 
kind  of  search.  Indeed,  this  kind  of  search  will  almost 
never  be  needed  if  children  are  inspected  carefully 
enough,  at  a  very  early  period,  when,  as  yet,  they  are 
simple,  and  the  art  of  wrong  has  not  begun  to  be 
learned.  Accustomed  then  to  the  feeling  that  art  hides 
nothing,  they  will  never  try  to  hide  any  thing  by  it 
afterwards. 

2.  Have  it  as  a  caution  that,  in  holding  a  magisterial 
relation,  asserting  and  maintaining  law,  discovering  and 
redressing  wrong,  you  are  never,  as  parents,  to  lose  out 
the  parental;  never  to  check  the  demonstrations  of 
your  love;  never  to  cease  from  the  intercourse  of 
play.  If  you  assert  the  law,  as  you  must,  then  you 
must  have  your  gospel  to  go  with  it ;  your  pardons 
judiciously  dispensed,  your  Christian  sympathies  flow- 
ing out  in  modes  of  Christian  concern,  your  whole  ad- 
ministration gentled  by  tenderness.  Above  all,  see  that 
your  patience  is  not  easily  broken,  or  exhausted.  If 
your  authority  is  not  established  in  a  day,  you  have 
small  reason,  in  that  fact,  to  be  fretted,  or  discouraged, 


FAMILY    GOVEKNMENT.  337 

and  the  less  reason  if  you  are  and  are  seen  to  be,  to 
believe  that  it  ever  can  be  established.  There  will 
sometimes  be  a  child,  or  children,  given,  that  have  a 
more  restive  and  less  easily  reducible  nature  than  oth- 
ers, and  partly  because  they  have  more  to  reduce. 
Time  with  such  is  commonly  a  great  element,  and  as 
time  is  needed  for  them,  patience  will  be  needed  in  you. 
Let  them  have  a  little  more  experience  of  themselves, 
and  of  what  a  good  and  wise  regulation  means ;  let  their 
rational  nature  be  farther  unfolded  and  come  to  your  aid, 
and  they  will  be  gradually  taking  sides  with  your  au- 
thority. The  other  and  more  tractable  children,  win- 
ning on  their  respect,  will  also  assist  in  the  taming  of 
their  repugnances.  Meantime  God,  who  perhaps  gave 
you  this  trial  to  complete  your  patience,  and  purify  all 
graces  in  you,  will  be  raising  you  to  a  higher  pitch  of 
character  and  authority,  which  no  most  wayward  child 
can  well  resist.  And  so  it  will  be  your  satisfaction  to 
see,  in  due  time,  that  your  reward  is  coming ;  that  your 
children  are  growing  into  all  truth  and  order  together ; 
melting  into  all  confidence  and  good  understanding  with 
authority  itself.  Your  triumph  will  now  be  sealed. 
You  will  have  your  house  in  subjection  with  all  grav- 
ity ;  a  little  bishopric,  as  the  apostle  would  say,  gath- 
ered in  heaven's  truth  anri  unitv.  obedient  Christian, 

filial,  and  free. 

29 


VI. 


PLAYS  AND  PASTIMES,  HOLIDAYS  AND  SUN- 
DAYS. 

"And  the  streets  of  the  city  shall  he  full  of  hoys  and  girls  playing  in 
the  streets  thereof." — ZechariaTiy  viii.  5. 

Happy  days  are  tliese  that  figure  in  the  prophet's 
vision.  The  people  of  the  city  are  accnstomed  to  scenes 
that  are  widely  different,  and  give  a  peculiar  zest  to  his 
picture.  In  the  times  of  pestilence,  in  the  horrors  of 
the  siege,  in  the  sweeping  out  of  captivity,  what  silence 
of  desolation  have  they  seen — the  silence  of  ghastly 
death,  the  silence  of  gaunt  famine,  the  silence  of  empti- 
ness and  depopulated  life.  It  shall  no  more  be  so ;  the 
city  shall  be  God's  mountain,  sheltered  under  his  care, 
exempt  from  all  the  past  desolations  of  pestilence  and 
war — peaceful,  populous,  secure,  and  strong.  All  which 
is  shown  by  two  simple  touches  that  make  out  the  cgm- 
plete  picture — "  There  shall  yet  old  men  and  old  women 
dwell  in  the  streets  of  Jerusalem,  and  every  man  with 
his  staff  in  his  hand  for  very  age.  And  the  streets  of 
the  city  shall  be  full  of  boys  and  girls,  playing  in  the 
streets  thereof." 

We  can  see,  too,  for  ourselves  that  the  prophet's  feel- 
ing goes  into  his  picture;  and  that  he  has  a  natural 
delight  in  it  himself.     He  sees  the  venerable  crones 


PLAYS    AND    PASTIMES.  839 

gathering  at  the  corners,  and  blesses  himself  in  the 
sight ;  hears  the  ring  of  happy  voices  in  the  streets  and 
market-places,  and  plays  his  feeling  in,  with  the  play- 
ing boys  and  girls  of  the  Lord's  glad  mountain.  Inspi- 
ration has  not  taken  the  nature  out  of  him,  but  has 
only  made  him  love  the  innocent  glee  of  childhood  the 
more. 

I  draw  it,  accordingly,  from  this  beautiful  touch  of 
the  pro|)het's  picture,  that  religion  loves  too  much  the  plays 
and  pleasures  of  childhood,  to  limit  or  suppress  them  hy  any 
kind  of  needless  austerity. 

Having  set  the  young  of  all  the  animal  races  a  play- 
ing, and  made  their  beginning  an  age  of  frisking  life 
and  joyous  gambol,  it  would  be  singular  if  God  had 
made  the  young  of  humanity  an  exception  ;  or  if,  hav- 
ing put  the  same  sportive  instinct  in  their  make,  he 
should  restrict  them  always  to  a  carefully  practical  and 
sober  mood.  What  indeed  does  he  permit  us  to  see,  in 
the  universal  mirth-time  which  is  given  to  be  the  be- 
ginning of  every  creature's  life,  that  he  has.  Himself,  a 
certain  pleasure  in  their  exuberant  life,  and  regards  their 
gambols  with  a  fatherly  satisfaction  ?  What,  too,  shall 
we  judge,  but  that  as  all  instincts  are  inserted  for  that  to 
which  they  tend,  so  this  instinct  of  play  in  children  is 
itself  an  appointment  of  play  ? 

Besides,  there  is  a  very  sublime  reason  for  the  play- 
state  of  childhood  which  respects  the  moral  and  religious 
well-being  of  manhood,  and  makes  it  important  that  we 
should  have  our  first  chapter  of  life  in  this  key.  Play 
is  the  symbol  and  interpreter  of  liberty,  that  is,  Chris- 


840  PLAYS    AND    PASTIMES, 

tian  liberty ;  and  no  one  conld  ever  sufficiently  conceive 
the  state  of  free  impulse  and  tlie  joy  tliere  is  in  it,  save 
by  means  of  this  unconstrained,  always  pleasurable  ac- 
tivity, that  we  call  the  play  of  children.  Play  wants  no 
motive  but  play ;  and  so  true  goodness,  when  it  is  ripe 
in  the  soul  and  is  become  a  complete  inspiration  there, 
will  ask  no  motive  but  to  be  good.  Therefore  God  has 
purposely  set  the  beginning  of  the  natural  life  in  a  mood 
that  foreshadows  the  last  and  highest  chapter  of  immor- 
tal character.  Just  as  he  has  made  hunger  in  the  body 
to  represent  hunger  in  the  soul,  thirst  in  the  body  to 
represent  thirst  In  the  soul,  what  is  sweet,  bitter,  sour 
in  the  taste  to  represent  what  is  sweet,  bitter,  sour  in 
the  soul's  feeling,  lameness  to  represent  the  hobbling  of 
false  principle,  the  fierce  combustion  of  heat  to  repre- 
sent the  rage  of  angry  passion,  all  things  natural  to 
represent  all  things  spiritual,  so  he  prepares,  at  the 
very  beginning  of  our  life,  in  the  free  self-impulsion 
of  play,  that  which  is  to  foreshadow  the  glorious  liberty 
of  the  soul's  ripe  order  and  attainment  in  good.  One 
is  the  paradise  of  nature  behind  us,  the  other  the  para- 
dise of  grace  before  us;  and  the  recollection  of  one 
images  to  us,  and  stimulates  us  in,  the  pursuit  of  the 
other. 

Holding  this  conception  of  the  uses,  and  the  very 
great  importance  of  play,  as  a  natural  interpreter  of 
what  is  highest  and  last  in  the  grand  problem  of  our 
life  itself,  we  are  led,  on  sober  and  even  religious  con- 
viction, to  hold  in  high  estimation  the  age  of  play.  As 
play  is  the  forerunner  of  religion,  so  religion  is  to  be 


HOLIDAYS    AND    SUNDAYS.  841 

the  friend  of  play ;  to  love  its  free  motion,  its  bappy 
scenes,  its  voices  of  glee,  and  never,  by  any  needless 
austerities  of  control,  seek  to  hamper  and  shorten  its 
pleasures.  Any  sort  of  piety  or  supposed  piety  that  is 
jealous  of  the  plays  and  bounding  activities  of  childish 
life,  is  a  character  of  hardness  and  severity  that  has,  so 
far  at  least,  but  a  very  questionable  agreement  with 
God's  more  genial  and  fatherly  feeling.  One  of  the  first 
duties  of  a  genuinely  Christian  parent  is,  to  show  a  gen- 
erous sympathy  with  the  plays  of  his  children;  pro- 
viding playthings  and  means  of  play,  giving  them  play- 
times, inviting  suitable  companions  for  them,  and  re- 
quiring them  to  have  it  as  one  of  their  pleasures,  to 
keep  such  companions  entertained  in  their  plays,  in- 
stead of  playing  always  for  their  own  mere  self-pleasing. 
Sometimes,  too,  the  parent,  having  a  hearty  interest  in 
the  plays  of  his  children,  will  drop  out  for  the  time  the 
sense  of  his  years,  and  go  into  the  frolic  of  their  mood 
with  them.  They  will  enjoy  no  other  play- time  so 
much  as  that,  and  it  will  have  the  effect  to  make  the 
authority  so  far  unbent,  just  as  much  stronger  and  more 
welcome,  as  it  has  brought  itself  closer  to  them,  and 
given  them  a  more  complete  show  of  sympathy. 

On  the  same  principle,  it  has  an  excellent  effect  to 
make  much  of  the  birthdays  of  children,  because  it 
shows  them,  little  and  dependent  as  they  are,  to  be  held 
in  so  much  greater  estimation  in  the  house.  When 
they  have  each  their  own  day,  when  that  day  is  so  re- 
membered and  observed  as  to  indicate  a  real  and  felt 
interest  in  it  by  all,  then  the  home  in  which  they  are  so 

29^ 


342  PLAYS    AND    PASTIMES, 

cherislied  is  proportionally  endeared  to  feeling,  and  wliat 
has  magnified  them  they  are  ready  to  magnify. 

On  the  same  principle,  too,  public  days  and  festivals, 
those  of  the  school,  those  of  the  state,  and  those  of  relig- 
ion, are  to  be  looked  upon  with  favor,  as  times  in  which 
they  are  to  be  gladdened  by  the  shows,  and  plays,  and 
simple  pleasures  appropriate  to  the  occasions  ;  care  be- 
ing only  taken  to  put  them  in  no  connection  with  vice, 
or  any  possible  excess.  Let  them  see  what  is  to  be 
seen,  enjoy  what  is  to  be  enjoyed,  and  shun  with  just 
so  much  greater  sensibility  whatever  is  loose,  or  wild, 
or  wicked. 

Eeligious  festivals  have  a  peculiar  value  to  children ; 
such  I  mean  as  the  festivals  of  Thanksgiving  and  Christ- 
mas— one  a  festival  of  thanks  for  the  benefits  of  Prov- 
idence, the  other  for  the  benefits  of  that  supernatural 
providence  which  has  given  the  world  a  Saviour  and  a 
salvation.  Both  are  religious,  and,  in  that  fact,  have 
their  value ;  for  nothing  will  go  farther  to  remove  the 
annoyance  of  a  continual,  unsparing,  dry  restraint  upon 
the  soul  of  childhood,  and  produce  a  feeling,  as  re- 
spects religion,  of  its  really  genial  character,  than  to 
have  it  bring  its  festive  and  joyously  commemorative 
days.  One  of  the  great  difficulties  in  a  properly  relig- 
ious nurture  is,  that  religion  has  to  open  its  approaches 
to  the  soul,  and  make  its  beginnings  in  the  shape  of 
law ;  to  say  God  requires  of  you  this,  forbids  you  in 
that,  makes  it  your  life  to  be  set  in  all  ways  of  obedi- 
ence. It  takes  on  thus  a  guise  of  constraint,  and  so  far 
wears  a  repulsive  look ;  but  if  it  can  show  how  genial  it 


HOLIDAYS    AND    SUNDAYS.  843 

is,  how  truly  it  loves  even  childisli  enjoyment,  by  gild- 
ing for  it  clays  of  joy  and  festive  celebrations,  then  the 
severities  of  law  and  responsible  obedience  take  on 
themselves  a  look  of  benignity,  and  it  begins  to  be  felt 
that  God  commands  us,  not  to  cripple  us,  but  to  keep 
us  safe  and  lead  us  into  good.  Such  days,  it  is  true, 
may  be  greatly  abused  by  what  is  really  unchristian ; 
what  is  sensual  and  low,  and  very  close  to  vice  it- 
self; and  it  is  much  to  be  regretted  that  the  Christmas 
festival,  otherwise  so  beautiful  and  appropriate,  taken 
as  a  Christian  commemoration  of  the  greatest  fact  of  the 
world's  history,  has  been  so  commonly  associated  with 
traditional  looseness  and  excess.  The  friends  of  such  a 
day  can  not  do  it  any  so  great  honor,  as  to  clear  it  en- 
tirely of  the  excess  and  profane  jollity  by  which  it  was 
made  to  commemorate  any  thing  and  every  thing  but 
Christ,  that,  setting  it  in  character  as  a  genuine  religious 
festivity,  they  may  give  it  to  all  friends  of  Christ  as  a 
day  of  universal  observance. 

Happily  there  is  now  such  an  abundance  of  games 
and  plays  prepared  for  the  entertainment  of  children, 
that  there  is  no  need  of  allowing  them  in  any  that  stand 
associated  with  vice.  Those  plays  are  generally  to  be 
most  favored  that  are  to  be  had  only  in  the  open  air,  and 
in  forms  of  exercise  that  give  sprightliness  and  robustness 
to  the  body.  At  the  same  time,  there  needs  to  be  a 
preparation  of  devices  for  the  entertainment  of  children 
indoors  in  the  evening ;  for  the  prophet  did  not  give  it 
as  a  picture  of  the  happy  days  of  Jerusalem,  that  the 
streets  of  the  city  should  be  full  of  boys  and  girls  play- 


344  PLAYS    AND    PASTIMES, 

ing  there  in  the  evening,  or  into  the  night,  away  from 
their  parents  and  the  supervision  of  their  home.  There 
is  any  thing  signified  in  that  but  happiness  and  public 
well-being.  Christian  fathers  and  mothers  will  never 
suffer  their  children  to  be  out  in  the  public  streets  in 
the  evening,  unless  they  are  themselves  too  loose  and 
self-indulgent  to  assume  that  care  of  the  conduct  and 
the  hours  of  their  children,  which  is  imposed  upon  them 
by  their  parental  responsibilities.  In  country  places, 
far  removed  from  all  the  haunts  of  vice,  and  in  neigh- 
borhoods where  there  are  no  vicious  children,  it  might 
work  no  injury  if  boys  were  allowed  to  be  out,  now  and 
then,  in  their  coasting  or  skating  parties  in  the  evening. 
But  the  better  rule  in  large  towns,  the  absolute  rule, 
having  no  exceptions  as  regards  very  young  children, 
will  be  that  they  are  never  to  be  out  or  away  from  home 
in.  the  evening.  Meantime,  it  will  be  the  duty  of  the 
parents,  and  a  kind  of  study  especially  of  the  mother, 
to  find  methods  of  making  the  house  no  mere  prison, 
but  a  place  of  attraction,  and  of  always  cheerful  and 
pleasant  society.  She  will  provide  books  that  will  feed 
their  intelligence  and  exercise  their  tastes,  pictures, 
games,  diversions,  plays;  set  them  to  inventing  such 
themselves,  teaching  them  how  to  carry  on  their  little 
society,  in  the  playful  turns  of  good  nature  and  fun,  by 
which  they  stimulate  and  quicken  each  other  ;  drilling 
them  in  music,  and  setting  them  forward  in  it  by  such 
beginnings  that  they  will  shortly  be  found  exercising 
and  training  each  other ;  shedding  over  all  the  play,  in- 
fusing into  all  the  glee,  a  certain  sober  and  thoughtful 


HOLIDAYS    AND    SUNDAYS.  345 

look  of  character  and  principle,  so  that  no  overgrown 
appetite  for  sport  may  render  violent  pleasures  neces- 
sary, but  that  small,  and  gentle,  and  easy,  and  almost 
sober  pleasures,  may  suffice ;  becoming,  at  last,  even 
most  satisfactory.  Here  is  the  field  of  the  mother's 
greatest  art,  viz  :  in  the  finding  how  to  make  a  happy 
and  good  evening  for  her  children.  Here  it  is  that  the 
lax,  faithless,  worthless  mother  most  entirely  fails; 
here  the  good  and  wise  mother  wins  her  best  successes. 

Meantime  some  care  must  be  exercised,  that  the  rehg- 
ious  life  itself  be  never  set  in  an  attitude  of  repug- 
nance to  the  plays  of  childhood.  There  must  be  no 
attempt  to  raise  a  conscience  against  play.  Any  such 
religion  will  certainly  go  to  the  wall ;  any  such  con- 
science will  be  certainly  trampled,  and  things  innocent 
will  be  done  as  if  they  were  crimes ;  done  with  a  guilty 
feeling;  done  with  as  bad  effects  every  way,  on  the 
character,  as  if  they  were  really  the  worst  things. 
ISTothing  is  more  cruel  than  to  throw  a  child  into  the 
attitude  of  conflict  with  God  and  his  conscience,  by 
raising  a  false  conscience  against  that  which  both  God 
and  nature  approve.  It  is  nothing  less  than  making  a 
gratuitous  loss  of  religion,  required  by  no  terms  of  rea- 
son, justified  by  no  principle,  even  of  Christian  sacrifice 
itself 

Suppose,  for  example,  that  a  child  has  begun  to  show 
many  pleasant  evidences  of  love  to  God  and  all  good 
things,  but  that  he  is  eager  still  in  play,  or  sometimes 
gets  quite  wild  in  the  excitement  of  it.  If,  at  such  a 
time,  it  is  sprung  upon  him,  as  a  conclusion,  that  he 


346  PLAYS    AND    PASTIMES, 

does  not  truly  love  God,  because  lie  is  so  mucb.  taken 
by  the  excitements  of  play,  he  will  thus  be  discouraged 
without  reason,  in  all  his  confidences  of  piety,  and  it 
will  be  strange,  if  by-and-bye  he  does  not  begin  to 
show  a  settled  aversion  to  religious  things.  How  can 
he  do  less,  when  he  is  compelled  to  see  it,  as  in  conflict 
with  all  the  most  innocent  and  most  truly  natural  in- 
stincts of  his  age  ?  Or,  to  make  the  case  more  plain, 
drawing  the  question  to  a  closer  point,  suppose  the 
child,  having  so  many  evidences  of  piety  in  his  dispo- 
sitions, to  be  found  at  some  kind  of  play  in  the  family 
prayers,  or  that  he  rushes  out  from  such  prayers,  in  a 
manner  that  indicates  eagerness  and  an  emancipated 
feeling,  or  that  he  sometimes  shows  uneasiness  in  the 
hours  of  public  worship  on  Sunday,  or  gives  manifest 
tokens,  in  the  morning,  of  a  desire  to  escape  from  it, 
is  it  then  to  be  set  down,  in  your  parental  remonstran- 
ces with  him,  that  he  has,  of  course,  no  love  to  God,  or 
the  things  of  religion  ?  By  no  means.  How  often  does 
the  adult  Christian  feel  even  a  disinclination  to  such 
things  ;  how  often  hurry  away  from  his  formal  prayer, 
that  he  may  get  into  his  shop,  or  his  field,  or  into  some 
negotiation  that  has  haunted  his  sleep  in  the  night ;  how 
often  sit  through  sermons  with  his  mind  on  the  game  of 
politics,  on  the  investment  made  or  to  be  made ;  on  his 
journey,  or  his  mortgage,  or  the  rivals  he  has  in  his 
trade  ?  Is  it  worse  for  a  child  to  be  after  his  plays,  with 
only  the  same  kind  of  eagerness  ?  Doubtless  all  such 
engrossments  of  the  soul,  whether  of  one  kind  or  the 
other,  are  to  be  taken  as  bad  signs,  and,  as  far  as  they 


HOLIDAYS    AND    SUNDAYS.  347 

go,  to  be  allowed  their  due  weight.  But  which  is  worse 
and  more  fatal,  the  child's  undue  possession  by  the 
spirit  of  play,  or  the  man's  by  the  spirit  of  gain — the 
honest,  artless,  letting  forth  of  nature  by  one,  or  the 
deliberate,  studied,  scheming  of  the  other — it  is  not  dif- 
ficult, I  think,  to  guess.  No  matter  if  the  latter  is 
more  sober  and  thoughtful  in  the  mood,  observing  a 
better  show  of  gravity.  For  just  that  reason  he  is  only 
to  be  judged  the  more  harshly.  If  then  we  can  bear 
with  adult  Christians,  who  are  much  in  the  world,  and, 
forgetting  themselves  often,  fall  into  moods  of  real  dis- 
inclination to  their  duty,  are  we  to  set  it  down  as  some 
total  evidence  against  the  piety  of  a  child,  that,  by 
mere  exuberance  of  life,  he  is  occasionally  hurried 
away  from  sacred  things,  into  matters  of  play  ?  Noth- 
ing is  more  unjust.  Why  should  we  require  it  of  a 
child  to  be  perfect,  when  we  do  not  require  it  of  a  man  ? 
And  if  we  tolerate  inconstancy  of  feeling  or  impulse 
in  one,  why  not  a  much  less  worldly  and  deliberate  in- 
constancy in  the  other  ? 

Thus  far  we  speak  for  the  side  of  play,  showing  how 
far  off  it  is  from  the  purpose  of  religion  to  take  away, 
or  suppress,  the  innocent  plays  of  childhood ;  how 
ready  it  is,  on  the  other  hand,  to  foster  them  and  give 
them  sympathy.  But  it  is  not  the  whole  of  life,  even 
to  a  child,  to  be  indulged  in  play.  There  is  such  a 
thing  as  order,  no  less  than  such  a  thing  as  liberty ;  and 
the  process  of  adjustment  between  these  two  contending 
powers,  begins  at  a  very  early  date.     Under  the  law  of 


348  PLAYS    AND    PASTIMES, 

the  house,  of  the  school,  and  of  God,  the  mere  play 
impulse  begins  very  soon  to  be  tempered  and  modera- 
ted by  duty,  and  the  problem  is  to  make  divine  order 
itself,  at  last,  a  state  of  liberty  analogous  to  the  state  of 
play,  as  already  suggested.  But  the  law  that  is  to  fash- 
ion such  order  will  be  first  felt  as  a  restriction ;  then, 
when  it  becomes  the  spirit  of  the  life,  the  order  itself 
will  be  liberty.  There  is  no  such  thing,  therefore,  as  a 
possibility  to  childhood  of  unrestricted  play.  Eestric- 
tion  must  be  encountered  as  often  as  the  order  of  the 
house  demands  it,  then  as  often  as  the  school  de- 
mands it,  then  as  often  as  the  duties  of  religion  demand 
it.  Though  such  restrictions  are  never  to  be  looked 
upon  as  hostile  to  the  child's  play,  but  only  as  terms 
that  are  really  necessary  for  his  training  into  the 
organic  relations  under  which  he  is  born,  best  for  his 
character,  and  even  best  for  the  enjoyments  of  his  play 
itself  Otherwise  he  would  either  become  sated  by  it 
in  a  short  time,  or  his  appetite  for  it  would  become  so 
egregiously  overgrown,  that  no  possible  devices  or 
means  could  be  invented  to  keep  pace  with  it.  Be- 
sides, a  child,  thus  put  to  nothing  but  mere  play,  would 
very  soon  grow  into  such  lightness  and  dissipation  of 
feeling,  as  to  be  mentally  addled,  and  would  so  be 
wholly  incapacitated  for  any  of  the  more  sober  and 
manly  of&ces  of  life. 

Here,  then,  begins  a  process  of  training  into  moral 
order,  which,  without  wishing  to  be  any  restriction 
upon  play,  is  yet  of  necessity  such  a  restriction.  The 
child  is  required  to  conform  his  conduct,  including  his 


HOLIDAYS    AND    SUNDAYS.  349 

plays,  to  the  peace  of  the  house,  to  the  conditions  of 
sick  persons  in  it,  to  the  hours  and  times  and  general 
comfort  of  other  inmates  older  than  himself.  Errands 
are  put  upon  him  that  require  him  to  forego  his  pleas- 
ures. When  he  is  old  enough,  he  is  set  to  works  of 
industry,  it  may  be,  that  he  may  contribute  something 
to  the  general  benefit.  By  all  which  restrictions  of  play, 
he  is  only  prepared  to  enjoy  his  pastimes  and  plays  the 
more.  The  restrictions  he  will  doubtless  feel,  at  the 
time,  and  may  be  somewhat  restive  under  them ;  but 
when  he  is  thoroughly  brought  into  the  order  of  the 
house,  and  is  set  in  the  habit  of  serving  it,  as  an  inter- 
est of  his  own,  then  he  will  obey,  contrive,  and  work, 
and  even  drudge  himself  to  serve  it,  constrained  by  no 
motive  but  the  service  itself. 

In  the  same  manner  it  will  be  laid  upon  him  to  be  at 
his  place  in  the  school,  to  be  punctual  to  his  times,  to 
miss  no  lesson,  to  hold  his  mind  to  his  studies  by  close, 
unfaltering  application,  even  though  it  cost  him  a  loss 
of  just  that  liberty  in  play  that  he  would  most  like, 
and  take  it  as  the  very  bliss  of  his  good  fortune  to  have. 
Kestricted  thus  by  the  order  of  the  school,  he  will  only 
enjoy  his  play-times  the  more,  and  finally  will  come  to 
the  enjoyment  of  study  itself  for  its  own  sake. 

And  so  it  will  be  in  religion.  There  must,  of  course, 
be  in  it,  what  may  be  called  restrictions  upon  children. 
All  law  is  felt  as  restriction  at  the  first,  but  it  will  not  be 
that  God  makes  war  on  their  innocent  plays ;  thej^  only 
need  as  much,  to  be  established  in  right  conduct,  well- 
doing, and  piety,  as  to  have  their  indulgence  in  such 

30 


850  PLAYS    AND    PASTIMES, 

pleasures.  If  God  will  take  them  away  from  all  mis- 
rule and  wretchedness,  and  will  bring  them  into  all  best 
conditions  of  blessedness  and  peace,  and  even  of  liberty 
itself,  he  must  put  them  under  his  commandments,  train 
them  into  his  divine  will,  and  settle  them  in  his  own 
perfect  order ;  and  if  he  is  obliged,  in  such  a  design,  to 
infringe  here  and  there  upon  their  plays,  it  is  not  be- 
cause he  likes  the  infringement,  but  only  that  he  seeks 
the  higher  bliss  of  character  for  them.  Thus  when  a 
little  child  is  required  to  say  his  prayers  and  retire  at 
the  proper  time  for  sleep,  there  is  nothing  to  complain 
of  in  that  kind  of  constraint,  even  though  he  wants  to 
continue  his  play ;  for  the  thing  required  is  plainly  for 
his  good — this  for  the  double  reason  that  it  trains  him 
toward  obedience  to  God,  and  a  life  in  heaven's  order, 
and  because  it  even  gives  him  a  better  appetite,  and  a 
fuller  fund  of  vigor  for,  his  play  itself.  And  so  it  is 
'  universally ;  no  constraint  is  to  be  blamed  as  infringe- 
ment on  his  happiness,  or  a  harsh  severity  against  his 
pleasures,  when,  in  fact,  all  highest  happiness  and 
widest  range  of  liberty  depend  on  the  requirement 
imposed. 

The  suggestions  and  distinctions  thus  far  advanced, 
have,  it  will  now  be  seen,  another  kind  of  use  and  im- 
portance, when  taken  as  preparatives  for  the  settlement 
of  a  great  practical  question,  viz :  how  to  use  the  Chris- 
tian Sabbath,  or  Sunday,  so  as  to  best  honor  the  day 
in  its  true  import,  and  best  secure  the  ends  of  Christian 
nurture.  "  The  question  is  one  that  relates  to  a  whole 


HOLIDAYS    AND    SUNDAYS.  351 

seventli  part  of  the  child's  time,  and  to  just  that  part 
which  is  most  peculiarly  religious  in  the  form,  and  most 
likely  to  assist  the  implanting  and  due  fostering  of 
religious  impressions.  So  much  indeed  is  there  in  this 
matter  of  a  right  use  of  Sundays,  that  the  success  of 
family  nurture  will  be  more  exactly  represented  and 
measured  by  that  use,  than  by  any  thing  else.  Sunday 
is  preeminently  the  child's  day  for  the  soul,  and  the  de- 
fective or  bad  use  of  it  is  never  going  to  be  compen- 
sated, by  any  wisest,  best  use  of  the  other  six  days  of  the 
week.  Indeed  there  is  so  much  depending  on  this  day, 
as  regards  human  society,  and  the  growth,  and  purity, 
and  power  of  religion,  that  where  it  is  lost  in  the  train- 
ing of  families,  no  other  kind  of  advantage — no  litur- 
gical drill,  or  eloquent  preaching,  or  faithful  and  clear 
doctrine — can  possibly  make  up  the  loss. 

The  main  question,  here,  is  how  much,  or  little,  of  re- 
striction is  to  be  laid  upon  children  in  the  due  observ- 
ance of  the  day?  And  the  tendency  is,  it  will  be 
observed,  to  one  or  the  other  of  two  opposite  ex- 
tremes— that  of  undue  severity,  or  that  of  unchristian 
looseness — and  this,  for  two  distinct  sets  of  reasons. 
Sometimes  for  the  reason  of  self-indulgence,  or  indo- 
lence in  the  parents ;  and  sometimes  for  the  reason  of 
insufficient  views  of  the  day,  as  it  stands  in  the  Scrip- 
ture, or  in  the  judgments  to  be  held  of  its  uses.  Thus 
it  will  be  noted — 

1.  That,  where  parents  are  too  indolent  for  any  kind 
of  painstaking  in  their  families,  they  will  contrive  to 
ease  the  burdens  of  their  duty  by  one  or  the  other  of 


352  PLAYS    AND    PASTIMES, 

two  distinct  metliods.  They  will  either  take  up  the 
notion  that  it  is  best  and  most  soundly  orthodox,  to 
make  a  very  stiff  practice  for  their  children ;  in  w^hich 
case  they  will  perhaps  require  them  to  sit  down  within 
doors  a  good  part  of  the  day,  learning  catechism  or 
scripture,  stilling  the  house  in  that  manner  so  as  to 
allow  them  to  sleep ;  or  else  they  will  take  up  the  no- 
tion that,  in  modern  times,  we  are  to  be  more  liberal, 
of  course,  being  more  intelligent;  in  which  case  they 
will  get  their  children  off  to  the  Sunday-school,  (with 
a  lesson,  or  without,)  or  if  they  better  like  it,  send  them 
into  the  streets,  or  the  fields.  Here  is  the  first  great 
obstacle  to  be  encountered,  in  securing  a  right  and  use- 
ful Sunday  in  families,  viz :  that  invincible  self-indul- 
gence in  parents,  which  is  the  bane  of  all  true  care  and 
responsibility ;  the  poison,  too,  of  all  honest  judgment 
in  finding  what  the  way  of  duty  is.  They  have  fre- 
quently no  such  earnest  and  prayerful  desire  of  the 
religious  benefit  of  their  children,  as  fastens  their  own 
attention,  or  presses  them  into  a  study  of  plans  and 
expedients  for  creating  a  religious  interest  in  their 
minds.  And  then  a  double  mischief  follows,  viz :  that 
they  grow  rusty  themselves  in  their  religious  character, 
and  having  no  good  conscience,  subside  into  a  state  of 
silence  and  acknowledged  incapacity;  and  next,  that, 
having  become  mere  drones  of  respectful  nothingness 
in  the  positive  duties  of  religion,  they  stand  as  actual 
impediments  in  the  way  of  all  genuine  religious  impres- 
sions in  their  families.  The  man  who  can  make  sacri- 
fices and  take  pains  for  his  children  at  home  will  grow, 


HOLIDAYS    AND    SUNDAYS.  353 

and  be  a  useful  Christian  every  where ;  and  the  man 
who  can  not,  will  be  a  dead  weight  every  where.  Here  is 
the  secret  of  a  great  part  of  that  drying  up  of  charac- 
ter which  we  so  often  deplore ;  and  the  secret  also  of 
that  strangely  irreligious  temper,  that  hatred  and  con- 
tempt of  all  religion,  that  so  often  excites  our  wonder 
in  the  children  of  nominally  Christian  families.  Let 
no  parent  hope  to  have  God's  blessing  on  the  Sundays 
of  his  house,  or  indeed  on  any  thing  else  that  concerns 
the  religious  welfare  of  his  children,  unless  he  is  willing 
to  take  pains,  make  sacrifices,  burn  as  a  light  of  holy 
example,  for  them  and  before  them.     Pass  then, 

2.  To  the  inquiry  what  is  the  true  conception  of  our 
Lord's  day,  or  Sunday  ?  What,  according  to  the  Scrip- 
ture, and  to  all  sound  judgment  of  the  day,  as  related 
to  the  Christian  training  of  families,  and  to  the  general 
welfare  of  society,  is  the  mode  and  amount  of  restriction 
imposed  by  it  ?  I  think  it  will  be  found,  in  giving  a 
right  answer  to  this  question,  that  the  true  use  of  the 
day  lies  between  two  errors,  or  extremes,  that  stand  over 
against  each  other ;  one  that  makes  a  virtually  Jewish 
day  of  it,  and  an  opposite  that,  with  undue  haste,  quite 
sweeps  it  away.  Neither  is  the  mode  of  scripture,  and 
the  two  are  about  equally  weak,  as  regards  their  philos- 
ophic grounds  and  reasons. 

According  to  the  Scripture,  God  ordained  a  religious 
day,  called  a  Sabbath,  at  the  very  morning  of  the  crea- 
tion. This  was  the  day  that  Moses  found  already  exist- 
ing and  only  re-enacted  in  the  ten  tables  of  the  moral 
law,  as  he  did  the  statutes  against  Iving  and  murder. 

30* 


854  PLAYS    AND    PASTIMES 


The  Sabbath  stands,  therefore,  on  precisely  the  same 
ground,  scripturally,  as  the  others;  on  the  same  too 
morally,  save  that  the  precise  natural  and  social  reasons 
for  it,  equally  clear  to  God,  are  not  so  to  us ;  and  that, 
so  far,  it  has  the  character  to  us  of  a  simply  divine 
institute,  while  the  other  nine  statutes  of  the  decalogue 
have  the  nature  of  acknowledged  principles,  grounded 
in  their  perceptible  moral  reasons.  Could  we  also  grasp, 
as  God  does,  the  precise  natural  reasons  for  observing 
just  one  day  in  seven  as  holy  time,  tracing  perfectly  the 
vast  religious,  and  social,  and  moral,  and  physical  ef- 
fects involved,  it  would  have  no  more  the  look  of  an 
institute,  and  would  become  a  principle  of  natural  obli- 
gation, like  the  others  that  stand  with  it. 

In  this  view,  it  can  not  be  repealed  any  more  than 
the  statute  against  theft,  or  false  witness.  It  is  not  a 
Jewish  day,  in  any  proper  sense  of  the  term,  but  a  day 
of  humanity,  a  world's-creation  day;  type  also  and 
ground  of  the  new-creation  day  of  the  Lord.  Moses 
went  on,  it  is  true,  after  the  delivery  of  the  decalogue, 
and  ordained  laws  civil,  and  police  regulations,  by  which 
the  Sabbath  was  to  be  observed  and  enforced,  and  it 
was  these  that  gave  a  Jewish  character  to  their  Sab- 
bath. And,  so  far,  no  farther,  it  was  that  the  Sabbath 
was  repealed,  in  becoming  a  Lord's  day.  When  Paul 
complains  to  the  Colossians,  that  they  "observe  new 
moons  and  Sabbaths,"  and  boldly  rebukes  the  Galatians, 
that  they  "turn  again  to  the  beggarly  elements  desiring 
to  be  in  bondage,"  and  "observe  days,  and  months,  and 
times,  and  years,"  he  does  not  mean  to  call  the  seventh 


HOLIDAYS    AND    SUNDAYS.  855 

day  of  the  decalogue  beggarly  elements,  any  more  than 
he  does  the  command  to  have  but  one  God,  or  not  to  steal 
or  kill.  The  beggarly  elements  are  the  political  addi- 
tions, those  rigors  of  observance  that  were  added  by  the 
political  statutes  and  the  religious  drill  of  the  ritual ; 
designed,  as  it  was,  for-  a  slavish  people,  low  in  their 
perceptions,  and  unable  to  know  religion  at  all,  save  in 
the  practice  of  austerities  under  it.  Eestriction  was  to 
them,  at  their  low  point,  about  the  only  religious  con- 
ception they  were  equal  to,  and  their  whole  ritual  econ- 
omy had  a  great  part  of  its  merit,  in  the  stringent  close- 
ness of  it,  and  the  perpetual  girding  of  their  practice 
under  its  hard  austerities.  So  far  the  whole  economy 
was  to  be  displaced,  and  the  civil-law  Sabbath  was  to 
go  down  with  it.  But  the  more  ancient  Sabbath  be- 
longed to  the  covenant  of  promise  itself,  and  had  the 
same  kind  of  freedom  and  genial  life  in  it  that  per- 
tained, in  Paul's  view,  to  the  whole  Abrahamic  order  in 
religion.  We  can  see  too,  for  ourselves,  that,  so  far  as 
it  is  affirmed  in  the  moral  code  of  the  decalogue,  in  dis- 
tinction from  the  civil  law,  it  has  a  character  of  extreme 
beauty  and  benignity.  What  can  be  a  more  genial  to- 
ken for  God,  than  that  he  appoints  such  an  institute  of 
universal  rest  from  labor  ?  And  what  could  evidence 
a  more  beautiful  mercy  than  that  God  should  take  the 
part,  in  this  manner,  of  all  labor,  even  that  of  servants 
and  slaves,  and  indeed  of  the  laboring  beasts,  the  oxen 
and  the  asses,  asserting  his  protection  over  them  (beau- 
tiful lesson  of  mercy  to  animals !)  even  against  the  sel- 
fishness of  their  owners,  and  allowing  them  to  have  a 


356  PLAYS    AND    PASTIMES, 

respite  to  tlieir  otherwise  endless  toils.  There  is,  in  fact, 
no  restrictive  word  in  the  commandment,  save  what 
may  be  felt  of  restriction  in  the  injunction  to  "keep  the 
day  holy,"  and  even  that  is  interpreted,  to  a  great  de- 
gree,  by  the  simple  requirement  of  a  cessation  from 
labor;  though  it  is,  doubtless,  to  be  understood  that 
the  day  is  duly  hallowed,  only  by  a  careful  devotion  of 
it  to  the  uses  of  religion.  Is  there  any  thing  harsh  or 
unduly  restrictive  in  such  a  day?  Does  Christianity 
itself  find  any  thing  to  accuse,  or  any  want  of  benignity 
in  it? 

There  is,  then,  no  pretext  of  authority  in  the  Scrip- 
ture for  making  the  Lord's  day,  or  Sunday,  a  Jewish 
day  to  children.  And  those  parents  who  make  it  a 
point  of  fidelity  to  lay  it  on  their  children,  according  to 
the  strict  police  regulations  of  the  Jewish  code,  would 
be  much  more  orthodox,  if  they  went  farther  back,  and 
took  up  conceptions  of  the  day  some  thousands  of  years 
older.  When  they  assume  that  every  thing  which  can 
be  called  play  in  a  very  young  child  is  wrong,  or  an 
offense  against  religion,  they  try,  in  fact,  to  make  Gala- 
tians  of  their  children ;  incurring  a  much  harsher,  Chris- 
tian rebuke,  than  if  they  only  turned  to  the  beggarly 
elements  themselves,  and  laid  their  own  souls  under 
the  bondage.  What  can  a  poor  child  do,  that  is  cut  off 
thus,  for  a  whole  twenty-four  hours,  from  any  right  to 
vent  his  exuberant  feeling — impounded,  strictly,  in  the 
house  and  shut  up  to  catechism;  or  taken  to  church, 
there  to  fold  his  hands  and  sit  out  the  long  solemnities 
of  the  worship,  and  what  to  him  is  the  mysterious  lingo 


HOLIDAYS    AND    SUNDAYS.  367' 

of  preaching;  then  taken  home  again  to  struggle  with 
the  pent  up  fires,  waiting  in  dreary  and  forlorn  vacan- 
cy, till  what  are  called  the  mercies  of  the  day  are  over? 
What  conception  does  he  get  of  religion,  by  such  kind 
of  treatment,  but  that  it  comes  to  the  world  as  foe  to 
every  bright  thing  in  it ;  a  burden,  a  weariness,  a  tariff, 
on  the  other  six  days  of  life  ? 

But  there  comes  in,  here,  a  grand  scripture  reason  for 
some  sort  of  restriction,  viz:  that  restriction  is  the 
necessary  first  stage  of  spiritual  training  every  where. 
Instead  of  rushing  into  the  conclusion,  therefore,  as 
many  parents  do,  that  all  religious  observances  which 
create  a  feeling  of  restraint,  or  become  at  all  irksome  to 
chidren,  are  of  course  hurtful,  and  raise  a  prejudice  in 
their  minds  against  religion,  the  Scripture  boldly  asserts 
the  fact  that  all  law  begins  to  be  felt  as  a  bondage. 
Law  and  gospel  have  a  natural  relationship,  and  they 
are  bound  together  every  where,  by  a  firm  interior  ne- 
cessity. It  is  so  in  the  family,  in  the  school,  and  in 
religion.  The  law  state  is  always  felt  to  be  a  bondage, 
and  the  restriction  is  irksome.  By-and-bye,  the  good- 
ness of  the  law,  and  of  them  by  whom  it  is  adminis- 
tered, is  fully  discovered,  and  the  obedience  that  began 
as  restriction  merges  in  liberty.  The  parents  are  obeyed 
with  such  care,  as  anticipates  even  their  wishes;  the 
lesson,  that  was  a  task,  is  succeeded  by  that  free  appli- 
cation which  sacrifices  even  health  and  life  to  the  eager- 
ness of  study ;  and  so  the  law  of  God,  that  was  origin- 
ally felt  only  in  the  friction,  rubbed  in  by  that  friction, 
is  finally  melted  into  the  heart  by  the  cross  of  Jesus, 


358  PLAYS    AND    PASTIMES, 

and  becomes  the  soul's  liberty  itself.  It  is  no  fault  then 
of  a  Sunday  tbat  it  is  felt,  in  some  proper  degree,  as  a 
restriction ;  or  even  that  the  day  is  sometimes  a  little 
irksome  to  tbe  extreme  restiveness  of  cbildren.  All  re- 
straint, wbetber  in  the  family  or  tbe  scbool,  is  likely  to 
be  somewhat  irksome  at  the  first.  The  untamed  will, 
the  wild  impulse  of  nature,  always  begins  to  feel  even 
principle  itself  in  that  way  of  collision  with  it.  Xor  is 
it  any  fault  of  the  Sunday  observance,  that  it  has,  to 
us,  the  character  of  an  institute.  If  it  were  a  mere  law 
of  natural  morality,  we  might  observe  it  without  any 
thought  of  God's  will ;  but  if  we  receive  it  as  an  insti- 
tute, we  acknowledge  God's  will  in  it;  and  nothing 
has  a  more  wholesome  effect  on  just  this  account,  than 
the  being  trained  to  an  habitual  surrender  to  what  God 
has  confessedly  enjoined  or  instituted  by  his  will.  It  is 
the  acknowledging  of  his  pure  authority,  and  is  all  the 
more  beneficial,  when  the  authority  is  felt  in  a  some- 
what restrictive  way.  The  transition  too  is  easy  from . 
this  to  a  belief  in  the  supernatural  facts  of  Christianity. 
The  conscience  and  life  is  already  configured  to  such 
faith  ;  for  whatever  is  accepted  as  an  institution  of  God, 
is  accepted  as  the  supernatural  injunction  of  his  will. 

The  flash  judgments,  therefore,  of  many,  in  respect 
to  the  observance  of  Sunday,  are  not  to  be  hastily  ac- 
cepted. We  are  not  to  read  the  prophet,  as  if  promis- 
ing that  the  streets  of  the  city  shall  be  full  of  boys  and 
girls,  on  the  Lord's  holy  day,  playing  in  the  streets 
thereof ;  or  as  if  that  kind  of  license  were  necessary  to 
clear  the  irksomeness  of  an  oppressive  observance ;  or 


HOLIDAYS    AND    SUNDAYS.  359 

as  if  the  power  of  religion  were  to  be  increased  by 
removing  every  thing  in  it,  wliicli  disturbs  the  natural 
impatience  of  restraint.  Some  child  that  was,  for  ex- 
ample, now  grown  up  to  be  a  man — a  profligate  it  may 
be,  a  sworn  infidel,  a  hater  of'-all  religion — laughs  at  the 
pious  Sundays  that  his  godly  mother  made  him  keep, 
and  testifies  to  the  bitter  annoyance  he  suffered  under 
the  irksome  and  superstitious  restrictions  thus  imposed 
on  his  childish  liberty.  Whereupon  some  liberalist  or 
hasty  and  superficial  disciple,  immediately  infers  that 
all  Sunday  restrictions  are  injurious,  and  only  raise  a 
hostile  feehng  in  the  child  toward  all  religion.  Where- 
as it  may  be,  in  the  example  cited,  for  such  are  not  very 
infrequent,  that  the  child  was  never  accustomed  to  re- 
striction at  any  other  time  as  he  ought  to  have  been,  or 
that  his  mother  was  too  self-indulgent  to  exert  herself 
in  any  such  way  for  his  religious  entertainment,  as  to 
respite  and  soften  the  strictness  of  the  Sunday  observ- 
ance. Perhaps  the  requirement  was  really  too  restric- 
tive, or  perhaps  it  was  so  little  and  so  unevenly  restric- 
tive, as  to  make  it  only  the  more  annoying.  Be  it  as  it 
may,  in  this  or  any  particular  example,  a  true  Sunday 
observance  needs  to  be  restrictive  in  a  certain  degree, 
and  needs  to  be  felt  in  that  way,  in  order  to  its  real 
benefit.  What  is  wanted  is  to  have  God's  will  felt  in 
it,  and  then  to  have  it  reverently  and  willingly  ac- 
cepted. A  Sunday  turned  into  a  holiday,  to  avoid  the 
supposed  evil  of  restrictiveness,  would  be  destitute  or 
religious  value  for  just  that  reason. 

The  true  principle  of  Sunday  observance,  then,  ap- 


860  PLAYS    AND    PASTIMES, 

pears  to  be  this  :  that  the  child  is  to  feel  the  day  as  a 
restriction,  and  is  to  have  so  much  done  to  excite  in- 
terest, and  mitigate  the  severities  of  restriction,  that  he 
will  also  feel  the  true  benignity  of  God  in  the  day,  and 
learn  to  have  it  as  one  of  his  enjoyments.  When  the 
child  is  very  young,  or  just  passing  out  of  infancy,  it 
will  be  enough  that,  with  some  simple  teaching  about 
Grod  and  his  day,  a  part  of  his  more  noisy  playthings  are 
taken  away ;  or,  what  is  better  than  this,  that  he  have 
a  distinct  Sunday  set  of  playthings ;  such  as  may  repre- 
sent points  of  religious  history,  or  associate  religious 
ideas,  abundance  of  which  can  be  selected  from  any 
variety  store  without  difficulty ;  then,  as  the  child  ad- 
vances in  age,  so  as  to  take  the  full  meaning  of  lan- 
guage, or  so  as  to  be  able  to  read,  the  playthings  of  the 
hands  and  eyes  will  be  substituted  by  the  playthings 
of  the  mind ;  which  also  will  be  such  as  connect  some 
kind  of  religious  interest — books  and  pictures  relating 
to  scripture  subjects,  a  practice  in  the  learning  and  be- 
ginning to  sing  Christian  hymns,  conversations  about 
God  and  Christ,  such  as  bring  out  the  beauty  of  God's 
feeling  and  character,  and  present  Him,  not  so  much 
as  a  frightful,  but  more  as  a  friendly  and  attractive 
being ;  for  the  child  who  is  only  scared  by  God's  ter- 
rors and  severities,  will  very  soon  lose  out  all  propor- 
tional conceptions  of  him,  and  will  want  to  hear  of  him 
no  more.  Even  the  Sunday  itself  that  only  brings  him 
to  mind  will,  for  just  that  reason,  become  a  burden. 
The  endeavor  should  be  to  excite  a  welcome  interest  in 
the  day  and  the  subjects  it  recalls. 


HOLIDAYS    AND    SUNDAYS.  861 

And  the  devices  that  may  be  used  are  endless.  The 
natural  history  of  Palestine,  the  rivers,  lakes,  moun- 
tains, every  city,  every  plain,  will  be  easily  associated 
in  the  child's  memory,  with  the  events  and  characters, 
and  religious  transactions  of  the  sacred  history ;  so  with 
lessons  of  duty  and  sentiments  of  piety.  For  such  uses, 
an  embossed  map  of  the  Holy  Land  would  be  invalu- 
able in  a  family  of  young  children.  Here  are  marked 
the  sites  of  towns  and  cities,  and  the  face  of  the  ground 
is  given  on  which  they  stood,  or  stand.  Here  was  the 
locality  of  a  battle,  on  this  mountain  or  slope,  or  in 
this  plain,  or  by  this  river.  Here  dwelt  some  patriarch, 
or  prophet,  or  ministering  woman.  Looking  over  these 
ranges  of  mountain,  through  these  valleys,  and  across 
these  lakes  and  plains,  questions  of  locality,  geography, 
prospect,  transaction,  miracle,  travel,  can  be  raised  with 
endless  variety,  such  as  will  sharpen  the  intellectual 
curiosity,  and  the  sense  of  religion  together.  The 
whole  country  may  be  daguerreotyped  in  this  manner 
on  the  child's  mind,  and  a  tenfold  interest  excited  in 
every  event,  whether  of  the  Old  or  New  Testament 
history. 

The  day  itself  also  will  be  raising  fruitful  topics  of 
inquiry.  The  topics  of  public  preaching,  especially 
those  which  relate  to  Christ — Christ  the  child,  Christ 
the  friend,  brother,  bread,  way,  reconciling  grace — will 
raise  interesting  questions  in  the  child's  mind,  and  he 
will  be  delighted  if  the  parent  can  make  out  a  good 
and  lively  child's  version  of  them. 

Hearing  much  too  of  the  church,  and  the  communion 


862  PLAYS    AND    PASTIMES, 

of  saints  in  its  order  and  ordinances,  lie  will  want  to 
know  more  exactly  what  tlie  cliiircli  is,  wliat  it  is  for, 
and  wIlo  are  in  it.  And  when  lie  is  rightly  informed 
concerning  it,  as  being  God's  holy  family,  or  school,  in 
which  all  the  members  are  disciples  or  learners  to- 
gether, and  how  Christ  himself  dwells  in  it,  unseen,  as 
the  teacher  and  head,  preserving  its  order  from  age  to 
age,  and  dispensing  gifts  of  life  and  salvation  to  them 
that  are  folded  with  him  in  it,  hoAv  tenderly  will  it 
move  his  feeling,  and  with  what  gladness,  to  hear  that 
he  also  is  a  member,  whom  Christ  has  accepted  before- 
hand, to  grow  Tip  as  a  disciple  in  it.  His  feeling  will  thus 
begin  at  once  to  take  sides  with  it,  as  with  his  family 
itself,  and  he  will  be  drawn  along  into  the  spirit  and 
cause  of  it,  just  as  he  is  into  the  cause  of  his  family. 

Perhaps  too  he  will  have  witnessed  the  sacraments, 
the  holy  supper,  and  baptism  as  administered  to  in- 
fants, and  he  will  be  asking,  probably,  for  some  ex- 
planation of  these.  And  nothing  can  have  a  more  be- 
nign effect  on  a  child's  religious  feeling  than  to  be 
trained  to  a  genuine  faith  in  sacraments.  But,  in  order 
to  this,  they  must  be  sacraments ;  that  is,  observances 
appointed  by  Grod,  as  the  occasions  of  a  special  faith  in 
the  special  visitations  and  powers  he  engages  to  bestow 
on  the  receivers. 

"We  have  become  even  a  little  jealous  of  sacraments. 
Our  recoil  from  the  extravagances  of  priestly  magic 
has  been  carried  too  far.  We  keep  them  on  foot,  but 
we  can  scarcely  be  said  to  have  faith  in  them,  or  to  use 
them.     The  very  attitude  of  mind  they  require  is  what 


HOLIDAYS    AND    SUNDAYS.  3G3 

we  want — want  in  the  family,  want  in  the  cliurch. 
They  set  ns  before  God  in  just  the  way  to  receive  Him 
best.  He  knew  exactly  what  we  wanted,  and  there- 
fore gave  them  to  communicate  his  own  divine  power 
in  them.  Suppose  that  Carthage,  in  giving  to  her  sons 
an  oath  {sacramentum)  of  eternal  hostility  to  Eome,  had 
been  able  to  pledge  a  war-grace  also,  going  into  battle 
with  them  to  make  them  strong  before  their  enemy 
and  always  victorious,  how  eagerly  would  they  have 
taken  hold  of  it,  in  the  terrible  encounters  of  the  field ! 

The  supper  then  is  to  be  a  sacrament  and  no  merely 
monumental  affair,  as  if  it  were  a  coming  to  the  tomb 
of  Jesus  to  read  his  inscription ;  but  it  is  to  be  an  occa- 
sion where  he  is  to  be  discerned,  manifested  as  dis- 
cerned, in  his  most  real,  only  real,  presence ;  dispens- 
ing himself  and  his  reconciling  peace  to  the  soul.  Ex- 
plained thus  to  the  child,  in  a  manner  adapted  to  his 
understanding,  it  is  also  to  be  added — "this  is  for  you, 
and  Christ  is  waiting  to  receive  you  and  bless  you  in  it, 
whenever  you  can  ask  it  truly  believing  that  he  will, 
according  to  the  faith  to  which  you  were  pledged  in 
your  baptism."  I  see  no  objection  whatever  to  his  being 
taken  to  the  supper  casually,  whenever  his  childish  piety 
really  and  seriously  desires  it ;  unless  some  opposing 
scruples  in  the  church,  or  the  minister,  should  make  it 
unadvisible.  Christ,  I  am  sure,  would  say — "Suffer 
the  child  and  forbid  him  not." 

The  sacrament  of  baptism,  which  he  will  often  see 
dispensed  to  infants — and  they  ought  always  to  be  pre- 
sented in  a  public  way,  or  in  the  open  church,  for  that 


364  PLAYS    AND    PASTIMES, 

purpose — can  be  handled,  in  tliese  Sunday  conversa- 
tions, with  still  greater  effect.  This  preeminently  is  the 
child's  sacrament ;  signifying  no  regenerative  work 
done  upon  the  child,  (opus  operaium^)  but  the  promise 
of  an  always  cherishing,  cleansing,  sealing  mercy,  in 
which  he  is  to  be  grown,  as  one  that  is  born  in  due 
time;  and  which  he  is  always  to  believe  in,  and  be 
taking  hold  of,  in  all  his  childish  struggles  with  evil. 
And  he  is  to  have  it,  not  as  a  sacrament  dispensed  once 
for  all  and  ended,  but  as  a  perpetual  baptism,  always 
distilling  upon  him,  pledged  to  go  with  him,  overliving 
his  many  faults  and  falls,  and  operating  restoratively 
when  it  can  not  progressively,  assisting  repentances 
when  it  can  not  growths  in  good.  He  is  thus  to  be 
always  putting  on  Christ,  as  being  baptized  into  Christ, 
and  to  live  in  the  washing  of  regeneration  and  the 
renewing  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  shed  on  us  abundantly 
through  Jesus  Christ  our  Saviour.  Sentiments  of  pro- 
foundest  reverence  for  his  baptism  are  to  be  always 
cherished  in  him.  He  is  to  have  it  as  the  one  pure 
thing  that  has  touched,  and  always  touches  him.  Fam- 
ily government,  the  family  prayers,  the  saintly  mother's 
kiss,  every  thing  earthly,  has  the  touch  and  stain  of 
evil ;  but  the  sacrament  of  God's  pure  Spirit  has  not. 
All  purest  sympathy  of  God  is  here  with  him.  He  is 
God's  child,  and  is  to  be  God's  man.  Using  thus  his 
baptism,  growing  up  into  his  baptism,  obligation  will 
be  serious,  but  never  oppressive;  for  he  breathes  for- 
giving help,  and  has  it  for  his  element. 

Now  all  these  subjects  of  the  Sunday  conversation — 


HOLIDAYS    AND    SUNDAYS.  365 

tlie  churcli,  the  supper  and  baptism — being  institutes 
of  God,  like  the  day  itself,  chime  with  the  day,  and  go 
to  keep  alive  the  same  institutional  faith,  thus  to  keep 
alive  the  faith  of  a  supernatural  religion  and  make  it 
habitual.-  Nature  being  all,  there  is  no  Sunday,  no 
church,  no  sacraments.  All  God's  institutes  are  set 
up  on  the  world  by  His  immediate  authority,  never 
grown  out  of  nature  and  her  causes.  And  it  is  just 
here  that  the  childish  affinities  are  most  readily  taken 
hold  of  by  religion.  Children  want  the  supernatural ; 
and  the  Lord's  day,^used  in  this  manner,  or  enlivened 
by  this  kind  of  teaching,  will  prepare  an  ingrown  habit 
of  faith,  and  will  never  annoy  them,  or  worry  them,  by 
its  reasonable  restrictions.  They  will  "  count  the  Sab- 
bath a  delight,  and  the  holy  of  the  Lord  honorable," 
and  will  have  beside,  all  the  blessings  of  the  prophet 
that  follow.  Under  such  a  practice,  religion,  or  faith, 
will  be  woven  into  the  whole  texture  of  the  family  life, 
and  the  house  will  become  a  truly  Christian  home. 
Nothing  will  be  remembered  so  fondly,  or  steal  upon 
the  soul  with  such  a  gladsome,  yet  sacred,  feeling  after- 
ward, as  the  recollection  of  these  dear  Sundays,  when 
God's  light  shone  so  brightly  into  the  house,  and  made 
a  holiday  for  childhood  so  nearly  divine. 

31* 


VII. 

THE  CHRISTIAN  TEACHING  OF  CHILDREN. 

But  continue  thou  in  the  things  which  thou  hast  learned  and  hast  been 
assured  of,  knowing  of  whom  thou  hast  learned  them. — 2  Timothy^  iii.  14. 

This  exliortatioii  of  the  apostle  to  his  young  friend 
Timothy,  is  the  more  remarkable  that  it  relates  to  his 
training  in  the  Old  Testament  scriptures,  which  were 
the  only  sacred  writings  known  at  the  time  of  his  child- 
hood— "And  that,  from  a  child,  thou  hast  known  the 
Holy  Scriptures,  which  are  able  to  make  thee  wise  unto 
salvation,  through  faith  which  is  in  Christ  Jesus."  His 
father  was  a  Greek,  (Acts  xvi.  1,)  and  probably  an  un- 
believer ;  but  his  mother  was  a  woman  of  such  piety, 
that  she  omitted  nothing  in  the  training  of  her  son,  and 
the  apostle  speaks  of  her,  in  the  same  epistle,  even  as 
having  let  down  upon  him  a  kind  of  piety  by  entail. 
But  her  faithful  lessons — these  are  what  he  is  now  call- 
ing to  mind ;  and  it  is  affecting  to  notice  that  he  not 
only  charges  it  on  him  to  remember  what  he  has  learned 
from  the  Scriptures,  because  they  are  God's  word,  but 
also  to  value  the  same  things  the  more,  "knowing  of 
whom  he  has  learned  them;"  that  is,  from  his  gracious 
and  faithful  mother.  Under  cover  of  this  beautiful  ex- 
ample, as  it  appears  in  all  the  parties  concerned,  the 
young  minister  and  disciple,  the  godly  mother  and  her 


THE     CHRISTIAN    TEACHING.  367 

instructions,  the  apostle  and  his  congratulations,  you 
will  perceive  that  I  am  going  to  speak  of— 

The  Christian  teaching  of  children. 

And  I  can  not  do  better  than  to  notice,  in  the  begin- 
ning, three  points  which  stand  upon  the  face  of  the 
apostle's  exhortation. 

1.  The  very  great  importance  of  this  teaching,  when 
rightly  dispensed.  It  is  not  indeed  the  first  duty  of  the 
parent,  for  other  duties  go  before,  as  we  have  already 
seen,  preceding  even  the  use  of  language.  Neither  is 
it,  as  a  great  many  parents  appear  to  assume,  a  matter 
in  which  their  religious  duties  to  their  children  are  prin- 
cipally summed  up.  It  is  not  every  thing  to  teach,  or 
verbally  instruct  their  children,  least  of  all  to  indoc- 
trinate them  in  the  formulas  and  theoretic  principles  of 
the  faith.  But  how  very  great  importance  must  there 
be  in  the  teaching,  when  an  apostle,  setting  his  young 
friend  in  charge  as  a  preacher  of  the  gospel,  bids  him 
continue  still  in  the  teachings  of  his  godly  mother,  and 
even  to  remember  them  for  her  sake.  The  New  Testa- 
ment preacher  is  exhorted  still  to  be  an  Old  Testament 
son,  and  is  sent  forth,  in  the  power  of  the  ancient  Scrip- 
ture, even  after  Christ  has  come.  And  just  so  it  will 
ever  be  true  of  the  ripest  and  tallest  of  God's  saints, 
who  were  trained  by  His  truth  in  their  childhood,  that 
however  deep  in  their  intelligence  or  high  in  spiritual 
attainments  they  have  grown  to  be,  the  motherly  and 
fatherly  word  is  working  in  them  still ;  and  is,  in  fact, 
the  core  of  all  spiritual  understanding  m  their  character. 


868  THE    CHRISTIAN    TEACHHSTG 

2.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  tlie  teaching  of  Timothy's 
mother  was  scriptural — '^  And  that,  from  a  child,  thou 
hast  known  the  Holy  Scriptures."  They  had,  as  far  as 
we  have  been  able  to  learn,  no  catechisms  in  that  day. 
The  ten  commandments  and  certain  selected  Psalms, 
were  probably  the  scriptures  in  which  they  were  most 
exercised,  and  which  probably  Timothy  had  "learned," 
in  the  sense  of  having  them  stored  in  his  memory. 
And  there  is  this  very  great  advantage  in  the  scriptural 
teaching,  or  training,  that  it  fills  the  mind  with  the 
word  and  light  of  the  Spirit,  and  not  with  any  mere 
wisdoms  of  opinion.  And  there  is  the  less  reason,  now, 
for  going  out  of  the  divine  word  to  get  lessons  for  the 
teaching  of  children,  that  our  scripture  roll  is  enlarged 
by  the  addition  of  the  words  and  history  of  Christ  him- 
self. In  a  right  use  of  the  Scripture,  thus  amplified 
by  the  gospel,  there  is  no  end  to  the  subjects  of  interest 
that  may  be  raised.  The  words  are  simple,  the  facts  are 
vital,  the  varieties  of  locality,  dialogue,  incident,  char- 
acter, and  topic,  endless. 

I  do  not  undertake  to  say  that  nothing  shall  be  taught 
which  is  not  in  the  words  of  the  Scripture.  But  it 
must  be  obvious  that  very  small  children  are  more  likely 
to  be  worried  and  drummed  into  apathy  by  dogmatic 
catechisms,  than  to  get  any  profit  from  them.  If  exer- 
cised in  them  at  all,  it  should  be  at  a  later  period,  when 
their  intelligence  is  considerably  advanced ;  that  they 
may,  at  least,  get  some  shadow  of  meaning  in  them,  to 
repay  the  labor  of  committing  them  to  memory.  It  is 
generally  supposed,  in  the  arguments  urged  for  a  train- 


OF    CHILDREN.  369 

ing  in  catec"hism,  that  the  real  advantage  to  be  gained  is 
the  fastening  or  anchoring  of  the  child  in  some  fixed 
faith.  But  the  deplorable  fact  is,  that  what  is  called  a 
fastening  is  reall}^  the  shutting  in,  or  encasing  of  the 
soul,  in  that  particular  shell  of  opinion — the  training  of 
the  child  to  be  a  sectarian  before  he  is  a  Christian.  Ilis 
anchorage  in  some  Christian  belief,  which  is  certainly 
desirable,  would  be  accomplished  much  more  effectually, 
if  he  were  trained,  for  example,  to  recite  the  Apostle's 
or  the  Nicene  creed.  Here  he  does  not  merely  mem- 
orize, but  he  assents ;  and,  what  is  more,  does  it  by  an 
act  of  practical  homage,  or  worship — a  confession. 
And  then  what  he  assents  to  is  no  matter  of  opinion,  or 
speculative  theology,  but  a  recitation  of  the  supernatural 
facts  of  the  gospel,  taken  simply  as  facts.  For  these 
facts  are  intelligible  even  to  a  very  young  child,  and 
will  be  recited  always  with  the  greater  interest,  that  the 
recitation  is  itself  a  religious  act,  or  confession. 

I  am  principally  concerned  here  with  the  case  of  very 
young  children,  not  with  such  as  are  farther  advanced 
in  age,  or  intelligence ;  and  there  is  no  room  for  doubt, 
in  their  case,  whatever  may  be  decided  in  respect  to 
others,  that  the  teaching  of  Timothy's  mother,  the 
scripture  teaching,  is  to  be  preferred.  The  memoriz- 
ing of  the  ten  commandments  and  the  Lord's  prayer, 
followed  by  the  Apostle's  creed  and  the  simplest 
Christian  hymns,  connected  with  scripture  readings, 
conversations,  and  discussions,  will  compose  a  body  of 
teaching  specially  adapted  to  a  child,  and  most  likely  to 
make  him  wise  unto  salvation. 


870  THE    CHRISTIAN    TEACHING 

3.  It  is  to  be  noted  tliat  tlie  most  genuine  teacMng, 
or  only  genuine  teacliing,  will  be  tliat  which  interprets 
the  truth  to  the  child's  feeling  by  living  example,  and 
makes  him  love  the  truth  afterwards  for  the  teacher's 
sake.  It  is  a  great  thing  for  a  child,  in  all  the  after  life, 
to  "know  of  whom"  he  learned  these  things,  and  to  see 
a  godly  father,  or  a  faithful  mother,  in  them.  ISTo  truth 
is  really  taught  by  words,  or  interpreted  by  intellectual 
and  logical  methods;  truth  must  be  lived  into  mean- 
ing, before  it  can  be  truly  known.  Examples  are 
the  only  sufficient  commentaries;  living  epistles  the 
only  fit  expounders  of  written  epistles.  When  the 
truly  Christian  father  and  mother  teach  as  being 
taught  of  God,  when  their  prayers  go  into  their 
lives  and  their  lives  into  their  doctrine,  when  their 
goodness  melts  into  the  memory  and  heaven,  too, 
breathes  into  the  associated  thoughts  and  sentiments 
to  make  a  kind  of  blessed  memory  for  all  they  teach, 
then  we  see  the  beautiful  ofS.ce  they  are  in,  fulfilled. 
In  this  manner,  Timothy  was  supposed  to  have  a  com- 
plete set  of  recollections  from  his  mother  woven  into 
his  very  feeling  of  the  truth  itself  It  was  more  true  be- 
cause it  had  been  taught  him  by  her.  There  was  even 
a  sense  of  her  loving  personality  in  it,  by  which  it 
always  had  been,  and  was  always  to  be,  endeared.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  will  always  be  found  that  every  kind 
of  teaching  in  religion,  which  adds  no  personal  interest, 
or  attraction  to  the  truth,  sheds  no  light  upon  it  from  a 
good  and  beautiful  life,  is  nearly  or  quite  worthless. 
And  here  is  the  privilege  of  a  genuinely  Christian  father 


OF    CHILDREN.  371 

and  mother  in  their  teaching,  that  they  pass  into  the 
the  heart's  feeling  of  their  child,  side  by  side  with  God's 
truth,  to  be  forever  identified  with  it,  and  to  be,  them- 
selves, lived  on  and  over  with  it,  in  the  dear  eternity  it 
gives  him. 

But  these  are  general  considerations,  which  it  is  suffi- 
cient to  have  suggested  without  further  dwelling  upon 
them.  There  are  yet  a  great  many  subordinate  and 
particular  points,  of  a  more  promiscuous  character,  to 
which  also  I  must  call  your  attention.  And  I  deem  it 
here  a  matter  of  consequence  to  make  out,  first  of  all,  a 
somewhat  extended  roll  of  things,  which  are  not  to  be 
taught ;  for  so  many  things  are  taught  which  are  not 
true  for  any  body,  and  so  many  which  are  only  theo- 
logically true  for  minds  in  full  maturity — to  all  others 
meaningless  and  repulsive — that  many  a  child  is  fatally 
stumbled  in  religion,  just  because  of  his  teaching. 

First  of  all,  then,  children  are  not  to  be  taught  that 
they  were  regenerated  in  their  baptism.  That  will  only 
convert  the  rite  into  a  superstition,  and  put  the  child  in 
a  totally  false  position,  where  he  will  rest  his  Christian 
title  on  a  mere  outward  transaction  already  past,  and 
what  is  even  worse,  on  a  function  of  priestly  magic. 
Furthermore,  if  the  child  should  turn  out,  when  he  is 
fully  grown,  to  be  a  totally  reckless  and  profane  person, 
having  no  pretense,  or  even  semblance  of  religious 
character,  it  will  now  be  discovered  to  him  that  his  re- 
generation meant  nothing,  had  no  practical  effect  or 
value,  and  since  there  is  no  second  baptismal  regenera- 


372  THE    CHRISTIAN    TEACHING 

tion,  it  will  only  be  left  him  to  have  neither  any  care 
for  the  old,  or  hope  of  a  new  that  is  better.  Indeed  he 
must  now  be  saved,  for  aught  that  appears,  without  re- 
generation ;  which  makes  a  very  awkward  kind  of  gos- 
pel. If  the  child  could  be  taught  that  his  baptism 
signifies  regeneration ;  supposing  a  pledge  on  God's  part 
of  the  necessary  grace,  and  so  the  fact  presumptive,  that 
the  faith  and  careful  training  of  his  parents  shall  be  so 
far  issued  in  a  gracious  character,  that  his  very  first 
putting  forth  of  good  endeavor,  (having  been  divinely 
prepared,)  shall  be  crowned  with  Christian  evidence,  it 
would  be  well.  But  no  young  child  can  grasp  such  a 
conception  evenly  enough  to  hold  it.  The  most  that 
can  be  said  to  him,  therefore,  of  his  baptism,  is  that 
God  gave  it  to  his  parents  and  to  himself,  as  a  pledge 
of  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  all  needed  help,  that  he  may 
grow  up  into  good,  as  a  regenerated  man. 

As  little  are  young  children  to  be  taught  that  they 
are  of  course  unregenerated.  This,  with  many,  is  even 
a  fixed  point  of  orthodoxy,  and  of  course  they  have  no 
doubt  of  it.  They  put  their  children  on  the  precise 
footing  of  heathens,  and  take  it  for  granted  that  they 
are  to  be  converted  in  the  same  manner.  But  thev 
ought  not  to  be  in  the  same  condition  as  heathens. 
Brought  up  in  their  society,  under  their  example,  bap- 
tized into  their  faith  and  upon  the  ground  of  it,  and 
bosomed  in  their  prayers,  there  aught  to  be  seeds  of 
gracious  character  already  planted  in  them ;  so  that  no 
conversion  is  necessary,  but  only  the  development  of  a 
new  life  already  begun.     Why  should  the  parents  cast 


OF    CHILDREN.  373 

away  tlieir  privilege,  and  count  their  child  an  alien  still 
from  God's  mercies  ? 

Again,  you  are  not  to  teach  your  children  that  they 
need,  of  course,  to  be  regenerated,  because  they  fail  in 
obedience,  show  bad  tempers,  and  display  manifold 
other  faults.  Have  you  no  faults  yourselves  ?  Do  you 
then  spring  it  as  a  conclusion  against  yourselves,  that 
you  are  unregenerate  persons,  or  do  you  take  hold  of 
God's  help,  with  new  earnestness  and  confidence,  that 
you  may  get  strength  to  overcome  your  faults  and  be 
clear  of  them?  Shortcomings,  faults,  casual  disincli- 
nations of  feeling,  are  bad  signs,  such  as  ought  to  wa- 
ken distrust,  but  they  are  not,  of  course,  conclusive 
evidences. 

As  little  are  you  to  teach  them  that  they  are  certainly 
unregenerate,  or  without  piety,  because  they  are  light 
in  many  of  their  demonstrations,  full  of  play,  abound- 
ing in  frolicsome  gayeties.  Which  is  worse  and  farthest 
from  God,  these  innocent  exuberances  of  life,  or  the 
covetous,  overcaring^  overworking,  enviously  plotting, 
sobriety  of  their  parents  ? 

Again  you  are  never  to  teach  your  very  young  chil- 
dren that  they  are  too  young  to  be  good,  or  to  be  really 
Christian.  Never  allow  them  to  see  that  you  expect 
them  to  be  pious  only  at  some  future  day,  when  they 
are  older.  What  you  despair  of,  or  assume  to  be  no 
possibility  for  them,  they  certainly  will  not  attempt,  and 
the  discouragement  of  good,  thus  thrown  upon  them, 
may  be  even  fatal  to  their  future  character.  Draw  them 
rather  into  your  own  exercises,  taking  always  for  grant- 

32 


874  THE    OHEISTIAN"    TEACHING 

ed,  tliat  tliey  will  be  with  you.  Promise  them  a  com- 
mon part  with  you  in  God's  friendship,  and  as  your  love 
to  Grod  makes  you  good  to  them,  careful  of  them,  tender 
toward  them,  show  them  how  it  will  make  them  good 
to  one  another  and  to  you,  and  all  good  and  happy 
together. 

Again,  do  not  teach  them  that  they  can  never  pray, 
or  do  any  thing  acceptable  to  God,  till  after  they 
are  converted  or  regenerated.  This,  with  many,  is 
a  great  point  of  orthodoxy,  and  I  would  not  speak 
of  it  with  severity,  because  it  is  a  very  natural  mistake ; 
and  yet  it  is  one  of  the  most  hurtful  delusions,  short 
of  real  infidelity,  that  can  be  put  into  language.  It 
is  not  only  not  true  for  children,  but  it  is  not  true 
for  any  body,  and  is,  in  fact,  a  kind  of  barricade 
before  the  heavenly  gate  for  every  bod}^,  still  out- 
side. It  is  very  true  that  no  one  can  pray,  or  do 
any  thing  acceptably,  to  God,  as  being  and  remaining 
unconverted,  unregenerated ;  but  that  is  a  very  different 
thing  from  showing  that  no  one  can  pray,  or  do  any 
thing  acceptably  till  after  they  are  converted,  or  regen- 
erated. The  difference  is  just  as  wide  as  between  all 
good  possibility  and  none  whatever.  God  is  ready  to 
hear  every  child's  prayer,  every  man's  prayer,  calls 
him  to  come  and  be  heard  for  all  he  wants,  only  let  him 
j)ray  as  coming  to  be  converted,  or  born  of  the  Spirit, 
in  his  prayer.  If  the  prayers  of  the  wicked  are  an 
abomination,  as  they  certainly  are,  let  them  come  to 
cease  being  wicked,  and  be  made  right  with  God.  Can 
not  a  wicked  man  become  right,  and  at  what  time  and 


OF    CHILDREN.  875 

where,  better  than  when  God  is  hearing  and  helping  his 
prayer?  His  very  prayer  will  be  a  praying  out  of 
wickedness  into  right.  But  when  he  can  not  think, 
work,  pray;  can  not  do  any  thing  acceptably,  till  after 
he  is  born  of  the  Spirit,  that  word  after  fences  him  back, 
shuts  him  up  in  his  sin,  there  to  bide  his  time.  What 
multitudes  of  children  have  been  shut  away  from  the 
kingdom  of  God,  by  this  one  misconception  of  piously 
intended  orthodoxy. 

The  mistake  of  teaching  is  scarcely  less  fatal,  when 
the  child  is  put  to  the  doing  of  good  works,  and  the 
making  up  of  a  character  in  the  self-regulating  way. 
That  kind  of  duty  is  so  legal  and  painful,  and  the  poor 
child  will  be  so  often  floored  by  his  failures  in  it,  that 
he  will  not  continue  long.  A  kind  of  despair  will 
come  upon  him  in  a  short  time,  and  religion  itself  will 
take  on  a  hard  impossible  look,  that  is  even  repulsive. 
Kothing  will  draw  the  child  onward  in  ways  of  piety, 
but  the  sense  of  forgivenesses,  helps,  felt  sympathies  of 
grace  and  love.  Salvation  by  faith,  is  the  only  kind  of 
religion  that  a  child  call  support.  If  there  is  no  ladder 
to  heaven  but  a  ladder  of  will- works  and  observances, 
he  will  not  be  climbing  it  long.  Where  Luther  fell  off 
and  lay  groaning,  infant  steps  will  not  persist. 

It  is  a  great  mistake,  too,  and  a  great  Christian  wrong, 
under  salvation  by  faith,  to  be  always  showing  children 
what  a  hard,  dry  service  the  Christian  life  must  be. 
A  great  many  parents  do  this  unthinkingly,  because  it 
is  just  so  to  them.  Where  there  is  a  real  living  faith, 
and  children  believe  most  easily,  cheerfulness,  bright- 


376  THE    CHRISTIAN    TEACHING 

ness,  liberty,  joy,  are  tlie  element  of  life  itself.  But  if 
tlie  parent  is  down  in  the  lft)west  grades  of  possible 
devotion,  worried  and  not  blessed  by  liis  piety,  galled 
and  not  comforted ;  if  tbe  children  hear  him  mourning 
always  in  his  prayer,  and  confessing  shortcomings  and 
defeats  and  poverty  enough  to  ungospel  all  the  gospel 
promises,  it  should  not  be  wonderful  that  they  are  not 
particularly  drawn  to  that  kind  of  piety. 

These,  now,  are  some  of  the  things  which  are  not  to 
be  taught,  but  carefully  avoided  in  the  training  of  chil- 
dren. There  are  a  great  many  other  things  which  are 
not  to  be  taught,  for  the  reason  that  they  can  not  be 
sufficiently  apprehended,  and  will  only  confound  the 
understanding  instead  of  giving  it  light.  These  are  to 
be  taught,  not  formally  or  theologically,  but  implicitly, 
in  a  kind  of  child's  version,  which  the  confessions  com- 
monly do  not  give.  Thus  depravity  in  Adam,  the 
fall  of  the  race,  the  atonement  by  Christ  in  any  view 
that  makes  it  a  ground  of  forgiveness,  regeneration 
itself  as  a  metaphysically  defined  change  in  character — 
none  of  these  can  be  taught  as  a  doctrine  for  young 
children.  And  yet  they  can  all  be  taught  implicitly. 
Thus  we  may  represent  to  children  that  we  are  all  sin- 
ners, and  that  God  is  displeased  with  us  whenever  we 
do  or  think  what  is  wrong ;  that  we  want  a  better  and 
a  clean  heart,  so  that  we  shall  love  to  do  what  is  right, 
and  that  Christ  came  down  into  the  world  to  give  it  to 
us ;  that  when  we  feel  sorry  for  wrong  he  loves  to  for- 
give us,  and  that  when  we  feel  weak  and  are  much 


OF    CHILDREN.  377 

tempted  he  will  help  us,  hearing  our  prayer,  and  com- 
ing to  us  by  his  Spirit,  to  give  us  strength.  Meantime 
we  must  not  omit  teaching  that  Jesus  had  a  most  dear 
love  to  children,  took  them  in  his  arms,  blessed  them, 
loved  them  even  the  more  tenderly  because  of  the  bad 
world  into  which  they  are  come ;  and  that  breathing 
his  own  love  into  them,  he  was  able  to  say  that  of  such 
is  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  Proceeding  in  this  manner, 
let  the  call  be  to  the  child  to  become  good,  and  to  be 
always  trusting  Christ  to  make  him  so,  and  he  will 
get  the  force,  implicitly,  of  a  whole  gospel,  in  this 
very  simple  and  summary  version. 

While  the  whole  teaching  centers  at  this  point,  the 
mind  of  the  child  will  not  be  wearied,  of  course,  by  a 
continual  reiteration  of  the  same  very  simple  matter, 
but  it  will  be  led  about,  into  free  ranges  and  excur- 
sions, among  the  facts  and  very  dramatic  incidents  of 
the  Scripture  history.  Little  debates  will  be  raised 
about  duties  in  common  matters;  characters  will  be 
held  up  for  approbation,  or  to  be  condemned.  The 
matters  of  creation,  from  the  sky  downward,  will  come 
into  notice,  and  be  used  to  show  God's  wisdom  and 
greatness.  And  so  there  will  be  a  rotary  movement 
of  inquiry  and  teaching,  all  round  the  great  central 
point  of  being  good,  and  the  readiness  of  Christ  to  help 
us  in  it. 

Due  care  will  be  taken  also  not  to  thrust  religious 
subjects  on  the  child,  when  he  is  excited  by  other 
things,  in  a  manner  to  make  it  unwelcome.  His  times 
of  thought  and  appetite  must  be  watched.     Play  with 

82^ 


378  THE    CHRISTIAN    TEACHING 

him  wlien  he  wants  to  play,  teach  him  when  he  wants 
to  be  taught.  Untimely  intrusions  of  religion  will 
only  make  it  odious — the  child  can  not  be  crammed 
with  doctrine. 

Children  often  break  upon  their  parents  with  very 
tough  questions,  and  questions  that  wear  a  consider- 
able looking  towards  infidelity.  It  requires,  in  fact,  but 
a  simple  child  to  ask  questions  that  no  philosopher  can 
answer.  Parents  are  not  to  be  hurried  or  flurried  in 
such  cases,  and  make  np  extempore  answers  that  are 
only  meant  to  confuse  the  child,  and  consciously  have 
no  real  verity.  It  is  equally  bad,  if  the  child  is  scolded 
for  his  freedom  ;  for  what  respect  can  he  have  for  the 
truth,  when  he  may  not  so  much  as  question  where  it 
is  ?  Still  worse,  if  the  child's  question  is  taken  for  an 
evidence  of  his  superlative  smartness,  and  repeated 
with  evident  pride  in  his  hearing.  In  all  such  cases,  a 
quiet  answer  should  be  given  to  the  child's  question 
where  it  can  easily  be  done,  and  where  it  can  not,  some 
delay  should  be  taken  ;  wherein  it  will  be  confessed 
that  not  even  his  parents  know  every  thing.  Or,  some- 
times, if  the  question  is  one  that  plainly  can  not  be 
answered  by  any  body,  occasion  should  be  taken  to 
show  the  child  how  little  we  know,  and  how  many 
things  God  knows  which  are  too  deep  for  ns — ^how  rev- 
erently, therefore,  we  are  to  submit  our  mind  to  his,  and 
let  him  teach  us  when  he  will,  what  is  true.  It  is  a  very 
great  thing  for  a  child,  to  have  had  the  busy  infidel  lurk- 
ing in  his  questions,  early  instructed  in  regard  to  the 
necessary  limits  of  knowledge,    and   accustomed  to  a 


OF    CHILDREN.  379 

simple  faith  in  God's  requirement,  where  his  knowl- 
edge fails. 

Observe  also,  at  jnst  this  point,  the  immense  advant- 
age that  a  Christian  parent  has  in  Jesus  Christ,  as  re- 
gards the  religious  teaching  of  his  children.  I  speak 
here  of  the  fact  that  all  truth  finds  in  him  the  concrete 
form.  Truth  is  not  less  really  incarnate  in  him,  than 
God.  Indeed  he  testifies,  himself,  that  he  is  the  truth. 
And  he  is  so,  not  merely  in  the  sense  that  he  parabolizes 
the  truth,  and  gets  it  thus  into  human  conditions  or 
analogies,  but  that  his  own  person  also  and  life  are  the 
eternal  form  of  truth ;  that  he  lives  it,  acts  it  forth, 
groans  it  in  his  Gethsemane,  sheds  it  from  his  veins  in 
the  bleeding  of  his  cross.  You  may  take  your  chil- 
dren along  therefore,  through  his  childhood,  into 
his  ministries  of  healing,  on  to  his  death-scene  itself, 
and  it  will  be  as  if  you  led  them  through  a  gallery, 
where  all  divinest,  most  life-giving  truth  is  pictured. 
No  abstractions  will  be  wanted,  no  dif&cult  reaches  of 
comprehension  required ;  you  have  nothing  to  do  but 
to  show  them  Jesus  as  he  is,  and  the  Great  Teach- 
ing will  be  in  them — all  that  is  needed  as  the  vital 
bread  of  their  intelligence,  and  heart,  and  character. 
The  blessed  child's  doctrine  of  the  world  is  Christ. 
Have  it  then  as  your  privilege  to  be  always  unfolding 
your  child's  understanding,  and  spiritual  nature,  by 
that  which  will  be  life  and  healing  to  both ;  even  Jesus 
Christ,  the  Word  of  the  Father's  glory.  Converse 
much  of  him  and  about  him,  make  him  familiar,  and 
it  will  be  strange  if  you  do  not  find  that  both  your 


BSO  THE    CHEISTIAN    TEACHING 

conversation  and  theirs  is  in  heaven,  where  he  sitteth 
at  the  right  hand  of  God. 

And  of  this  you  will  be  the  more  certain  if  you 
teach  Christ  not  by  words  only,  but  by  so  living  as  to 
make  your  own  life  the  interpreter  of  his.  There  is 
no  feebler  and  more  unpractical  conception,  than  that 
children  are  faithfully  taught,  when  they  are  abund- 
antly lectured.  If  you  will  put  in  Christ,  you  must 
put  him  on.  There  is  no  such  gospel  for  them,  as  that 
which  flavors  your  own  conduct,  and  fills  your  personal 
atmosphere  with  the  Christly  aroma. 

At  the  same  time  it  should  be  the  constant  endeavor 
with  children,  to  make  the  subject  of  religion  an  open 
subject,  and  keep  it  so,  never  to  be  otherwise.  Kothing 
is  wider  of  dignity,  or  more  mischievous  in  its  effects, 
than  the  remarkable  shyness  of  religious  conversation 
in  most  Christian  families.  It  argues  either  some  great 
neglect  of  the  parents,  in  which  they  have  let  the  sub- 
ject fall  out  of  range  as  a  subject  not  to  be  named,  or 
else  it  shows  that,  in  trying  to  make  it  an  open  subject, 
so  much  of  cant  or  untimely  exhortation  has  been 
mixed  with  it,  as  to  make  it  unwelcome.  Rightly  con- 
ceived, there  is  no  subject  of  so  great  interest  and  such 
inexhaustible  freshness,  as  that  which  pertains  to  the 
soul  and  the  future  life.  Good  conversation,  too,  upon 
it,  in  the  house,  is  better  than  sermons.  Why  then 
should  a  Christian  family,  where  every  other  subject 
is  welcome,  taboo  this,  requiring  it  to  pass  in  silence, 
as  if  it  were  in  fact  the  forbidden  fruit  of  their  intel- 
ligence ? 


OF    CHILDREN.  381 

But  I  must  speak,  in  closing,  of  what  appears  to  be 
a  somewhat  general  misconception,  as  respects  the  aim 
of  Christian  teaching  in  the  case  of  very  young  chil- 
dren. According  to  the  view  I  am  here  maintaining, 
it  is  not  their  conversion,  in  the  sense  commonly  given 
to  that  term.  That  is  a  notion  which  belongs  to  the 
scheme  that  makes  nothing  of  baptism  and  the  organic 
unity  of  the  house ;  that  looks  upon  the  children  as 
being  heathens,  or  aliens,  requiring,  of  course,  to  be  con- 
verted. But  according  to  the  scheme  here  presented, 
they  are  not  heathens,  or  aliens ;  but  they  are  in  and 
of  the  household  of  faith,  and  their  growing  up  is  to  be 
in  the  same.  Parents  therefore,  in  the  religious  teach- 
ing of  their  children,  are  not  to  have  it  as  a  point  of 
fidelity  to  press  them  into  some  crisis  of  high  experi- 
ence, called  conversion.  Their  teaching  is  to  be  that 
which  feeds  a  growth,  not  that  which  stirs  a  revolution. 
It  is  to  be  nurture,  presuming  on  a  grace  already  and 
always  given,  and,  for  just  that  reason,  jealously  care- 
ful to  raise  no  thought  of  some  high  climax  to  be 
passed.  For  precisely  here  is  the  special  advantage  of 
a  true  sacramental  nurture  in  the  promise,  that  it  does 
not  put  the  child  on  passing  a  crisis,  where  he  is  thrown 
out  of  balance  not  unlikely,  and  becomes  artificially 
conscious  of  himself,  but  it  leaves  him  to  be  always  in- 
creasing his  faith,  and  reaching  forward,  in  the  sim- 
plest and  most  dutiful  manner,  to  become  what  God  is 
helping  him  to  be.  On  this  point  Dr.  Tiersch  says, 
with  very  great  insight,  both  of  the  gospel  and  of 
children — 


882  THE    CHEISTIAN    TEACHING 

"It  is. certainly  not  difficult  to  bring  a  child  into  a 
condition  of  emotion  and  anxiety,  by  representations  of 
natural  corruption,  of  the  judgment,  and  of  the  influ- 
ence of  the  enemy ;  and  to  fill  liim  with  doubts  of  his 
own  salvation,  thereby  moving  him  to  any  thing  that 
may  be  desired.  It  is  possible  that  by  these  means, 
deep  experiences  of  the  communion  of  the  soul  have 
been  brought  to  light.  But  these  are  consequences  that 
should  rather  be  objects  of  our  fear  than  of  our  rejoic- 
ing. For  here  comes  in  the  worst  of  all  dangers,  the 
early  wasting  of  such  impressions  and  experiences,  and 
a  creeping  in  of  untruth,  whilst  the  power  vanishes  and 
the  forms  of  speech  remain.  For  both  the  most  deli- 
cate and  the  most  solemn  experiences  become,  after  this 
method,  objects  of  continual  reflection  and  conversation, 
under  which,  at  last,  solemn  earnestness,  as  well  as  all 
delicacy,  is  destroyed,  and  there  remains  either  a  con- 
tinual self-deception,  with  the  semblance  of  the  reality 
of  godliness,  or  a  gnawing  consciousness  of  an  increas- 
ing untruthfulness,  and  of  an  inner  unfruitfulness  be- 
neath a  mass  of  phrases."* 

It  is  a  delicate  matter  for  children  to  navigate  in  this 
rough  sea  of  conversional  tossings,  where  the  stormy 
wind  lifteth  up  the  waves,  and  they  go  up  to  the 
heaven,  and  go  down  again  to  the  depth,  and  their  soul 
is  melted  because  of  trouble.  There  is,  for  the  little 
ones,  a  more  quiet  way  of  induction.  Show  them  how 
to  be  good,  and  then,  when  they  fail,  how  God  will 
help  them  if  they  ask  him  and  trust  in  him  for  help. 

*  Christian  Family,  p.  133. 


OF    CHILDREN.  383 

In  this  manner  they  will  be  passing  little  conversion- 
like  crises  all  the  time.  Eejoice  with  them  and  for  them 
as  they  do,  only  do  not  put  them  on  the  consciousness, 
in  themselves,  of  what  you  seem  to  see.  Let  them  be 
accustomed  to  it  as  a  fact  of  experience  that  they  are 
happy  when  they  are  right,  and  are  right  when  God 
helps  them  to  be,  and  that  he  always  helps  them  to  be 
when  they  put  their  trust  in  him.  The  Spirit  of  God  is 
nowhere  so  dovelike  as  he  is  in  his  gentle  visitations 
and  hoverings  of  mercy  over  little  children. 

What  is  wanted  is,  to  train  them  by  a  corresponding 
gentleness,  and  keep  them  in  the  molds  of  the  Spirit. 
Ko  spiritual  tornado  is  wanted  that  will  finish  up  the 
parental  duties  in  a  day ;  but  there  is  to  be  a  most  ten- 
der and  wise  attention,  watching  alwaj^s  for  them,  and, 
at  every  turn  or  stage  of  advance,  contributing  what  is 
wanted ;  enjoying  their  bright  and  happy  times  of  good- 
ness and  peace  with  them,  helping  their  weak  times, 
drawing  them  out  of  their  discouragements,  and  smooth- 
ing away  their  moods  of  recoil  and  bitterness ;  contriv- 
ing always  to  supply  the  kind  of  power  that  is  wanted, 
at  the  time  when  it  is  wanted.  Yery  young  children 
religiously  educated,  it  will  be  remembered  by  almost 
every  grown  up  person,  have  many  times  of  great  relig- 
ious tenderness,  when  they  are  drawn  apart  in  thought- 
fulness  and  prayer.  The  effort  should  be  to  make  these 
little,  silent  pentecosts  and  gentle  openings  God-ward 
sealing-times  of  the  Spirit,  and  have  the  family  always 
in  such  keeping,  as  to  be  a  congenial  element  for  such 
times ;  and  to  suffer  no  possible  hindrance,  or  opposing 


884  THE    CHRISTIAN    TEACHING. 

influence,  even  should  they  come  and  go  unobserved. 
Under  such,  kind  of  keeping  and  teaching,  God,  who  is 
faithful  to  all  his  opportunities,  as  men  are  not,  will  be 
putting  his  laws  into  the  mind  and  writing  them  in  the 
heart,  and  the  prophet's  idea  will  be  fulfilled  to  the  let- 
ter ;  it  will  not  be  necessary  to  go  calling  the  children 
to  Christ,  and  saying,  know  the  Lord;  for  they  will 
know  him,  every  one,  the  least  as  the  greatest,  and  the 
greatest  as  the  least,  each  by  a  knowledge  proper  to 
his  age. 


VIII. 

FAMILY  PRAYERS. 

"  And  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  that  clay,  I  will  hear,  salth  the  Lord,  I 
will  hear  the  heavens,  and  they  shall  hear  the  earth,  and  the  earth  shall 
hear  the  corn,  and  the  wine,  and  the  oil,  and  they  shall  hear  Jezreel." — 
Bosea  ii.  21-2. 

By  this  very  elaborate  and  poetically  ingenious  fig- 
ure, tlie  prophet  appears  to  be  giving  a  contrived 
representation  of  the  flict,  that  when  God  brings  in  the 
promised  day  of  his  universal  reign  in  the  earth,  there 
will  be  a  grand  convergency  of  causes  to  prepare  it, 
and,  like  so  many  concurrent  prayers,  to  make  common 
suit  for  it  before  Him.  Thus  he  figures  the  world  as 
being  the  beautiful  valley  called  Jezreel,  which  is  the 
garden,  so  to  speak,  of  the  land.  And  it  is  to  be  as  when 
the  people  of  Jezreel  get  their  harvest,  by  having  every 
thing  in  a  train  of  concurrent  agency  to  prepare  it — 
they  make  petition  by  their  careful  tillage  to  the  corn, 
the  grapes,  and  olives,  that  they  will  grow  apace ;  these, 
in  turn,  make  suit  to  the  earth  to  give  them  nutriment ; 
this  again  hears  them,  and  lifts  its  petition  to  the 
heavens,  asking  rain  and  dew ;  whereupon,  last  of  all, 
the  heavens  hand  up  the  prayers  to  God,  to  furnish 
them  water,  and  let  them  shed  it  down  ;  which  petition 
lie  graciously  hears,  and  the  harvest  follows.  So  he 
conceives  it  will    be,   as  the    harvest  of   the  world 

83 


886  FAMILY    PEAYERS. 

approaclies.  It  will  be  as  if  all  things  were  put  striv- 
ing together,  and  a  prayer  were  going  up  for  it  tlirough 
all  the  concurrent  circles  of  Providence.  God's  counsel 
and  kingdom  are  constructing  always  a  perfect  har- 
mony, by  their  convergence  on  his  perfect  end.  Then, 
as  the  perfect  end  is  neared,  and  the  harmony  with  it 
grows  more  complete,  it  will  be  as  if  more  things  were 
concurring  in  it  and  asking  for  it,  and  prayer,  falling  in 
as  a  cause  among  causes,  will  have  them  all  praying 
with  it,  or  handing  up  its  request.  In  which  we  may 
see  what  holds  good  of  all  prayer,  and  how  or  by  what 
law  it  prevails.  In  one  view,  the  whole  future  is 
prayed  in  by  the  whole  present,  being  such  a  future  as 
the  whole  present  demands.  The  more  things,  there- 
fore, prayer  can  get  into  harmony  with  itself  in  its 
request,  the  more  likely  it  is  to  prevail ;  and  the  more 
alone  it  is,  and  the  more  things  it  has  opposite  to  it,  in 
the  field  of  causes,  the  less  likely  it  is  to  prevail — even 
as  Adam  had  less  hope  of  success  in  praying  for  Cain, 
that  the  blood  of  Abel  was  crying  to  God  against  him 
from  the  ground. 

All  prayer  being  under  this  general  condition,  family 
prayer  will  be  of  course ;  and  of  this  I  now  propose  to 
speak.  I  choose  to  handle  the  subject  in  this  form,  in 
the  conviction  that  the  prayers  of  families  are  so  often 
defeated  by  the  want  of  any  such  concert  in  the  aims, 
plans,  tempers,  works,  and  aspirations  of  the  house,  as 
are  necessary  to  a  common  suit  before  God ;  in  other 
words,  because  the  prayers,  commonly  so  called,  are  de- 
feated by  the  suit  of  so  many  causes  contrary  to  them. 


FAMILY    PRAYERS.  387 

We  sometimes  use  the  terms  family  worship  and /am- 
ily  prayers^  without  any  reference  at  all  to  their  spiritual 
acceptance  with  God,  or  to  any  gifts  and  benefits  to  be 
bestowed,  in  the  way  of  answer  to  such  prayers.  We 
speak  of  the  worship,  or  the  prayers,  as  a  kind  of  morn- 
ing observance  ;  a  religious  formality  that  is  to  have  its 
value,  under  the  laws  of  drill  and  habitual  repetition ; 
good  therefore,  in  that  sense,  to  be  kept  a  going,  and 
not  expected  to  be  good  on  the  high  ground  of  faith  and 
living  intercourse  with  Grod.  That  it  is  to  be  the  open- 
ing of  heaven  and  the  keeping  of  it  open  to  the  family, 
under  the  conditions  of  prevailing  prayer,  is  either  not 
commonly  supposed,  or  not  made  a  point  of  practical 
endeavor.  The  benefits  thought  of  are  to  be  such  as 
will  come  of  mere  observance  itself,  and  the  religious 
reverence  impressed  by  it. 

Now  that  some  such  kind  of  benefit  may  be  expected 
to  follow,  I  am  not  about  to  question.  Any  such  ex- 
ternal observance,  kept  up  in  the  family,  must  probably 
beget  a  deeper  sense  of  religion,  and  prepare  all  the 
members  to  a  readier  admission  of  the  great  principles 
of  faith,  and  spiritual  devotion  to  God.  And  in  that 
view,  the  observance  of  family  worship  is  a  matter  of 
such  consequence  in  a  family,  that  the  parent,  who  con- 
fessedly is  not  a  Christian  person,  ought  still  to  feel  it 
incumbent  on  him  to  maintain  that  observance.  And 
if  such  were  the  persons  with  whom  I  am  dealing  in 
this  discussion,  I  should  urge  it  upon  them,  as  a  matter 
indispensable,  and  never  to  be  omitted.  But  my  sub- 
ject is  different.     I  am  addressing  Christian  parents,  on 


888  FAMILY    PRAYERS. 

the  subject  of  tlie  Christian  training  of  their  children ; 
showing  it  to  be  the  same  thing  as  a  training  into 
Christ,  and  how  that  training  will  secure  the  real  initia- 
tion of  their  children  into  a  state  of  genuine  discipleship. 
Having  this  aim  therefore,  I  shall  drop  out  of  notice 
family  worship  as  observance,  and  speak  of  it  only  as 
the  open  state  of  prayer  and  communion  with  God  in 
the  house.  For,  as  the  greater  includes  the  less,  we 
need  not  be  careful  about  the  less ;  but  only  about  the 
greater.  And  I  shall  speak,  in  the  conviction  that  a 
great  and  principal  reason  why  the  family  religion  of 
those  who  are  really  Christian  believers,  carries  no  sav- 
ing benefit  with  it,  is  that  they  are  content  with  the 
less  when  they  ought  to  claim  the  greater ;  maintaining 
the  family  prayers,  in  the  way  of  observance  only,  and 
not  as  an  appeal  of  faith  to  Grod.  They  imagine  some 
impossibility  perhaps  of  maintaining  the  family  religion 
on  so  high  a  key.  It  will  not  only  be  a  wearisome  and 
over-exhaustive  painstaking  for  themselves,  but  they 
sometimes  imagine  that  the  children,  too,  will  be  finally 
drugged  by  such  over-dosing,  in  the  spiritual  intensities 
of  rehgion,  and  be  only  the  more  repelled  from  it. 

But  they  greatly  mistake,  in  this  kind  of  judgment, 
by  mistaking  first,  in  their  conception  of  what  is  neces- 
sary to  the  prevalent  efiect  of  the  family  prayers,  and 
the  always  open  state  of  the  house  towards  God.  No 
rhapsodies  are  wanted,  or  flights  of  feeling,  or  heavings 
of  passional  intercession,  as  many  are  wont  to  assume, 
but  simply  that  there  should  be  a  sober,  calculated  har- 
mony between  all  the  plans  and  appointments  of  life, 


FAMILY    PRAYERS.  389 

and  the  prayers  or  petitions  made.  The  great  difficulty 
in  faith,  after  all,  is  to  be  fliithful.  God  is  not  carried 
by  shrieks  of  emotion,  but  by  the  honestly  meant  and 
soberly  contrived  ordering  of  things,  to  make  them 
work  in  with,  and,  if  possible,  work  out  the  prayers. 
In  this  view,  let  me  call  your  attention — 

I.  To  the  manner  in  which  prayers,  of  all  kinds,  get 
their  answer  from  God.  Two  things  arc  wanted,  as 
conditions  previous  to  the  favoring  answer.  First,  that 
the  matter  requested  should  agree  with  God's  beneficent 
aims,  or  the  ends  of  good  to  which  his  plans  are  built. 
Secondly,  that  the  prayer  should  agree  with  as  many 
other  prayers,  and  as  many  other  circles  of  causes  as 
possible ;  for  God  is  working  always  toward  the  largest 
harmony,  and  will  not  favor,  therefore,  the  prayers  of 
words,  when  every  thing  else  in  the  life  is  demanding 
something  else,  but  will  rather  have  respect  to  what  has 
the  widest  reach  of  things  and  persons  making  suit  with 
it.  It  is  at  this  latter  point  that  prayers  most  commonly 
fail,  viz :  that  they  are  solitary  and  contrary,  having 
nothing  put  in  agreement  with  them ;  as  if  some  one 
person  should  be  praying  for  fair  weather  when  every 
body  else  wants  rain,  and  the  gaping  earth,  and  thirsty 
animals,  and  withering  trees,  are  all  asking  for  it  to- 
gether. Or  a  man,  we  may  conceive,  prays  for  holi- 
ness, getting  off  his  knees  to  go  and  defraud  his  neigh- 
bor ;  or  that  he  may  be  prospered  in  some  plan  that  re- 
quires industry,  and,  by  indolence  and  inattention, 
leaves  all  the  causes  of  nature  making  suit  against  him. 

33*' 


390  FAMILY    PRAYERS. 

God  is  for  some  largest  harmony  in  the  hearing  of  pray- 
ers, as  in  every  thing  else.  All  the  prayers  that  he  will 
hear  too  must,  in  some  sense,  be  from  Himself,  which 
is  the  same  as  to  say  that  they  must  chime  with  His 
ends,  and  the  working  of  his  plans  generally. 

See  how  it  is,  for  example,  in  the  great  realm  of  nature. 
The  first  thing  here  to  be  discovered  is  that  every  thing 
requires  every  thing ;  or,  if  we  take  the  figure  of  prayer, 
that  all  events  make  suit  for  all.  Omit  any  one,  and  there 
would  be  a  shock  of  discord  felt  in  the  whole  frame- 
work. As  regards  the  interior  principle  of  causes,  we 
know  nothing ;  we  only  see  them  all  playing  into  all, 
and  all  demanding  all,  and  then,  all  together,  making 
suit  for  a  certain  general  future,  somehow  accordant 
with  them  and  their  harmonies.  Thus  it  will  be  seen 
to  hold,  even  scientifically,  in  the  grand  astronomic  sys- 
tem of  worlds,  that  all  the  innumerable  parts  have  a 
perfect  concurrence,  demanding  exactly  every  thing 
that  comes  to  pass,  in  the  motions,  changes  of  position, 
perturbations  of  parts,  and  processions  of  the  whole. 
The  principle,  every  thing  for  every  thing  and  all  to- 
gether one,  is  so  exact,  that  every  atom  and  tiniest 
insect  feels  the  touch,  in  fact,  of  every  heaviest,  high- 
est, and  remotest  orb,  and  every  such  orb  a  respective- 
ness  of  action  reaching  downward,  after  every  such 
minim  of  matter  and  life. 

Such  is  nature,  and  it  would  be  exactly  so,  were  it 
not  for  sin,  in  the  supernatural  order,  viz:  in  the 
wj^nts,  and  works,  and  prayers,  and  heavenly  gifts  of 
God's  spiritual  empire.     Sin  harmonizes  with  nothing. 


FAMILY    PRAYERS.  391 

It  is  a  principle  of  general  discord  with  all  God's  pur- 
poses, plans,  and  creations ;  refusing  to  be  included  in 
any  terms  of  intellectual  unity  and  order.  But  God  is 
none  the  less  intent  on  harmony  here,  that  the  constitu- 
ent harmony  of  his  realm  is  broken.  All  that  lie  is 
doing  as  a  world's  Eedeemer,  is  to  gather  together  in 
one,  all  the  loosened  elements  of  discord,  and  settle  the 
world  again,  in  everlasting  concord  and  unity.  And 
toward  this  final  issue  he  puts  all  things  working  to- 
gether as  for  the  same  good  issue. 

Thus  it  will  be  found  that  the  Bible  history  shows 
a  grand  convergency  of  all  the  matters  included  in  it, 
and  that  a  mysterious  concert  weaves  all  its  facts  to- 
gether, and  keeps  them  working  toward  the  same 
result.  The  ritual  of  Moses,  and  the  forty  years'  march, 
and  all  the  captivities  and  dispersions  of  the  people,  and 
the  dispersions  of  the  Greek  and  Eoman  languages,  and 
all  the  philosophic  exhaustions,  and  all  the  crumblings 
of  the  false  religions,  and  all  the  great  wars  of  the  Ro- 
mans, and  all  the  fortunes  of  empire  determined  by 
those  wars,  and  then  the  universal  pacification  of  the 
world — by  all  these  vast  concurrences  the  world  is  made 
ready,  and  set  waiting  for  Christ  to  be  bom.  The  stu- 
dents of  history,  looking  over  this  field,  are  astonished 
by  the  vastness  of  the  preparation,  and  it  is  to  them,  as 
if  they  heard  all  these  world-wide  powers  voiced  in 
prayer  together  for  the  coming  of  Jesus.  Just  here, 
then  was  the  time  for  him  to  come.  And  thus,  in  fact, 
he  came,  in  the  exact  fullness  of  time,  when  the  largest 
harmony  was  asking  for  him. 


892  FAMILY    PKAYERS. 

In  the  same  way,  it  will  be  seen,  descending  to  a 
lower  field,  tbat  every  conversion  to  God  takes  place 
wtien  some  largest  harmony  demands  it.  Not  always, 
or  commonly,  when  some  friend,  or  wife,  or  good  mother, 
prays  it,  wholly  alone,  but  when  others  join  them,  or 
when,  at  least,  there  is  a  large  concurrence  of  provi- 
dences and  causes,  making  the  same  suit,  and  joining 
in  the  general  conspiracy  of  reasons.  And  so  much  is 
there  in  this,  that  the  subject  himself  will  almost  always 
feel  a  conviction  of  some  wonderful  conjunction  of 
means,  and  conditions,  and  prayers,  just  then  brought 
together,  to  accomplish  the  otherwise  difficult  or  impos- 
sible result. 

Other  illustrations,  without  limit,  could  be  cited  from 
the  processes  of  Grod's  spiritual  administration ;  for  it  is 
always  working  toward  the  largest  harmony.  But  we 
come  directly  to  the  matter  of  prayer  itself.  And  here 
we  meet  the  promise,  first  of  all,  that — "if  we  ask  any 
thing  according  to  his  will  he  heareth  us;"  for  the  de- 
sign is  here  to  draw  the  petitioner  into  the  most  inti- 
mate acquaintance,  and  bring  him  into  the  most  exact 
conformity  with,  God's  purposes  and  ends.  And  prob- 
ably the  whole  economy  of  prayer,  or  giving  gifts  to 
prayer,  which  might  as  well  be  given  otherwise  with- 
out prayer,  is  to  affect  this  radical  agreement  of  the 
petitioners  with  God.  Next  we  have  that  peculiar 
phrasing  of  the  doctrine  of  prayer,  by  Christ,  when  he 
says — "If  two  of  you  shall  agree,  on  earth,  as  touching 
any  thing,  that  they  shall  ask,  it  shall  be  done  for 
them;"  where  the  intent  of  the  doctrine  is  to  bring  the 


FAMILY    PRAYERS.  393 

petitioners  into  the  largest  possible  circle  of  harmony 
among  themselves.  Hence  the  promise  too — "Ye  shall 
seek  me  and  find  me,  if  ye  search  for  me  with  all  your 
heart;"  where  the  purpose  is  to  bring  each  individual 
into  the  largest  harmony  with  himself,  and  not  leave 
half  his  dispositions,  or  aspirations,  or  lustings,  praying 
virtually  against  his  prayers.  Hence,  again  the  com- 
mand— "Watch  and  pray  lest  ye  enter  into  temptations ;" 
where  the  endeavor  is  to  set  the  voluntary  powers 
chiming  with  the  prayers,  and  working  toward  a  grand 
petitional  harmony  with  them.  By  the  whole  economy 
of  prayer,  then,  God  is  working  toward  the  largest, 
most  inclusive  harmony,  and  prayer  is  to  be  successful, 
just  according  to  the  amount  of  concurrency  there  is  in 
it.  First,  there  is  to  be  the  completest  possible  concur- 
rency with  God ;  then  a  concurrency  of  one  or  two 
hundred,  or,  if  so  it  may  be,  two  hundred  millions  of 
petitioners  in  a  common  suit ;  and  then  all  these  are  to 
be  total  in  the  suit,  bringing  all  their  lustings,  affections, 
works,  plans,  properties,  and  self-sacrifices,  into  the  pe- 
tition; whereupon  the  prayer  will  grow  strong,  just  in 
proportion  to  the  amount  of  agreement,  or  concurrence 
there  is  in  it. 

Under  this  great  law,  therefore,  prayer,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  has  been  getting  and  will  always  be  getting  more 
strength  by  the  larger  harmonies  it  embodies.  Noah 
prayed  alone  for  his  very  ungodly  times,  and  could  not 
be  heard— the  blood  of  Abel  was  crying  to  God  for  jus- 
tice over  against  him,  and  so  were  all  the  crimes  of  vio- 
lence and  murder  in  his  own  most  bloody  and  cruel 


394  FAMILY    PEAYERS. 

age.  Abraham  prayed  for  Sodom,  but  tliere  were  no 
fifty,  forty,  thirty,  twenty,  ten,  or,  as  far  as  we  know, 
more  than  one  righteous  man  to  pray  with  him ;  and 
therefore  he  fails,  obtaining  only  the  safety  of  that 
Grodly  brother's  family.  Afterwards  Daniel,  in  a  mat- 
ter of  great  peril,  was  able,  going  to  his  house  to  pray, 
to  set  his  three  friends  praying  with  him,  and  he  found 
the  light  on  which  even  his  life  depended.  Still  farther 
on,  Esther  set  all  her  countrymen  in  the  city  praying 
and  fasting  with  her,  and  obtained,  in  that  manner,  the 
deliverance  of  her  whole  people,  and  their  promotion  to 
honor  in  the  kingdom.  And  so,  again,  the  more  won- 
derful scene  of  power  which  inaugurates  the  church,  on 
the  day  of  Pentecost,  is  distinguished  by  this  principal, 
all-determining  fact,  that  the  disciples  are  all  with  one 
accord  in  one  place,  praying  for  the  heavenly  gift. 

Not  to  extend  these  illustrations  farther,  we  may 
safely  put  it  down  as  a  conclusion,  that  prayer  wants 
the  largest  possible  harmony  praying  with  it ;  or  what 
is  the  same,  as  many  reasons,  and  causes,  and  wants, 
and  conditions,  and  persons,  as  possible,  chiming  in  the 
suit  of  it ;  so  that  God  may  answer  it  for  harmony's 
sake,  and  not  against  harmony.  It  may  seem  that  I 
have  led  you  a  long  way  to  reach  this  conclusion,  espe- 
cially when  my  subject  is  family  prayer.  But  we  shall 
now  be  able — 

II.  To  dispatch  that  particular  subject  as  much  more 
briefly ;  and  besides,  I  have  been  able  to  hit  upon  no 
other  method,  which  promised  to  unfold  the  real  condi- 


FAMILY    PRAYERS.  395 

tions  of  family  prayer,  and  show  the  reasons  of  utter 
failure  and  abortiveness  in  it  so  distinctly  and  im- 
pressively. 

The  great  infirmity  of  family  prayers,  or  of  what  is 
sometimes  called  family  religion,  is  that  it  stands  alone 
in  the  house,  and  has  nothing  put  in  agreement  with  it. 
Whereas,  if  it  is  to  have  any  honest  reality,  as  many 
things  as  possible  should  be  soberly  and  deliberately 
put  in  agreement  with  it ;  for  indeed  it  is  a  first  point 
of  religion  itself,  that  by  its  very  nature,  it  rules  pre- 
sidingly  over  every  thing  desired,  done,  thought,  plan- 
ned for,  and  prayed  for,  in  the  life.  It  is  never  to  finish 
itself  up  by  words,  or  word-supplications,  or  even  by 
sacraments  ;  but  the  whole  custom  of  life  and  character 
must  be  in  it  and  of  it,  by  a  total  consent  of  the  man. 
And  more  depends  on  this,  a  hundred  times,  than  upon 
any  occasional  fervors,  or  passional  flights,  or  agoniz- 
ings.  The  grand  defect  will,  in  almost  all  cases,  be,  in 
what  is  more  deliberate,  viz :  in  the  want  of  any 
downright,  honest,  casting  of  the  family  in  the  type  of 
religion,  as  if  that  were  truly  accepted  as  the  first 
thing. 

Sec  just  what  is  w^anted,  by  what  is  so  very  com- 
monly not  found.  First  of  all,  the  mere  observance 
kind  of  piety,  that  which  prays  in  the  family  to  keep 
up  a  reverent  show,  or  acknowledgment  of  religion,  is 
not  enough.  It  leaves  every  thing  else  in  the  life  to  be 
an  open  space  for  covetousness,  and  all  the  gay  lust- 
ings  of  worldly  vanity.  It  even  leaves  out  prayer ;  for 
the  saying  prayers  is,  in  no  sense,  really  the  same  thing 


396  FAMILY    PEAYERS. 

as  to  praj.  Contrary  to  this,  there  should  be  some  real 
prayer,  prayer  for  the  meaning's  sake,  and  not  for  the 
shell  of  religions  decency  in  which  the  semblance  may 
be  kept.  This  latter  kind  looks,  indeed,  for  no  return 
of  blessing  from  God,  but  only  for  a  certain  religious 
effect  accomplished  by  the  drill  of  repetitional  observ- 
ance. There  is  also  another  kind  of  drill  sometimes 
attempted  in  the  prayers  of  families-,  which  is  much 
worse,  viz :  when  the  prayer  is  made,  every  morning, 
to  hit  this  or  that  child  in  some  matter  of  disobedience, 
or  some  mere  peccadillo  into  which'  he  has  fallen. 
Kothing  can  be  more  irreverent  to  God  than  to  make 
the  hour  of  prayer  a  time  of  prison-discipline  for  the 
subjects  of  it,  and  nothing  could  more  certainly  set 
them  in  a  fixed  aversion  to  religion  and  to  every  thing 
sacred.  This  kind  of  prayer  prays,  in  fact,  for  ex- 
asperation's sake,  and  the  effect  will  correspond. 

In  the  next  place,  what  is  prayed  for  in  the  house  by 
the  father,  is,  how  commonly,  not  prayed  for  by  the 
mother  in  her  family  tastes  and  tempers,  and  is  even 
prayed  against,  in  fact,  by  all  the  instigations  of  appear- 
ance, and  pride,  and  show,  which  are  raised  by  her 
motherly  studies  and  cares.  And  this,  too,  not  seldom, 
when  her  prayers  themselves  are  burdened  with  much 
feeling,  and  bear  the  appearances  of  much  earnest  long- 
ing for  the  piety  of  her  children.  Her  prayers  sound 
well  in  the  wording,  and  she  verily  thinks  that  she 
means  what  she  asks  for ;  but  the  notions  of  standing 
she  fe  putting  in  the  head  of  her  son,  or  the  dress  she 
is  just  now  getting  up  for  her  daughter,  pray,  a  hun- 


FAMILY    PRAYERS.  397 

dred  fold  harder  than  her  prayers,  only  just  the  other 
way ;  calling  in  results  of  feeling  and  character  that 
are  selfish,  worldly,  earthly  in  the  last  degree. 

It  is  a  matter  of  the  greatest  importance,  too,  as  re- 
gards the  successful  training  of  children,  that  they 
should  be  inducted  into  ways  and  habits  of  prayer 
themselves,  as  very  frequently  they  are  not.  Sometimes 
even  Christian  mothers,  who  pray  much  for  their  chil- 
dren, never  lead  them  into  the  practice  of  prayer  for 
themselves.  They  are  kept  from  so  doing,  by  the  sup- 
posed orthodox  belief,  first,  that  their  children  are  of 
course  in  the  gall  of  bitterness,  and  secondly,  that  such 
can  ofier  no  prayer,  which  is  not  an  abomination  to  the 
Lord ;  in  both  which  conclusions  they  are,  in  fact, 
neither  orthodox  nor  Christian,  and  what  to  the  children, 
at  least,  is  even  worse  than  that,  consent  to  let  them 
grow  up  in  no  personal  habit  of  religion.  How  then 
can  they  be  reached  by  the  prayers  of  the  house,  when 
they  are  deliberately  put  outside  of  the  possibility,  even 
of  beginning  to  pray  for  themselves  ?  Sometimes  they 
are  taught  to  pray  only  in  the  sense  of  saying  prayers, 
or  repeating  some  little  formula  appropriate  to  their  age. 
And  there  is  nothing  ill  in  this,  if  they  only  do  it  occa- 
sionally. But  the  much  better  method,  in  general,  is 
for  the  mother  to  word  a  simple  prayer  for  them  herself, 
and  let  them  follow  after  in  the  repetition  of  it,  sentence 
by  sentence.  The  prayer  in  this  case,  will  have  respect 
to  the  particular  matters  of  the  day ;  what  has  been 
seen,  felt,  enjoyed,  wanted,  suffered,  and  needs  to  be 
forgiven.      Yery  soon  the  child  himself,  practiced  in 

34 


898  FAMILY    PRAYEKS. 

this  way,  will  begin  to  drop  in  a  sentence,  here  or  there, 
that  comes  directly  out  of  his  feeling,  and  it  will  not 
be  long  before  he  will  be  able  to  word  a  whole  prayer 
for  himself,  and  will  so  be  led  along  into  the  habit  of 
praying  with  his  mother,  and  be  grown,  so  to  speak, 
into  the  ruling  desires  and  prayers  of  the  house.  In 
this  method,  regularly  pursued,  the  child  may  be  trained 
to  a  perfectly  open  state  in  the  matter  of  prayer;  so 
that  when  the  father  is  absent,  or  is  taken  away  by 
death,  he  will  be  ready,  at  a  very  early  period  on  his 
way  to  manhood,  to  take  his  father's  place.  There  will 
be  nothing  ghostly,  or  sanctimoniously  separated  from 
the  common  going  on  of  life,  in  the  way  of  prayer  thus 
maintained.  Having  it  for  the  element  of  childhood, 
and  being  grown  into  the  practice  of  it,  the  very 
geniality,  and  sweetness,  and  good  cheer  of  home,  will 
seem  to  be  lapped  in  it,  and  it  will  be  so  far  natural,  that, 
if  it  were  taken  away,  the  course  of  life  itself  would 
seem  to  be  even  painfully  unnatural.  A  house  without 
a  roof,  would  scarcely  be  a  more  indifferent  home  than 
a  family  state  unsheltered  by  God's  friendship,  and  the 
sense  of  being  always  rested  in  his  Providential  care  and 
guidance.  No  sweetness  of  life  is  so  indispensable  to  a 
family,  brought  up  thus,  in  the  open  state  with  God,  as 
to  have  all  the  cares,  affections,  partings,  sicknesses, 
afflictions,  prosperities,  marriages,  deaths,  and  all  kinds 
of  works,  habitually  blessed,  by  the  sense  of  God  ap- 
pealed to,  and  consciously  witnessing  in  them. 

But  this  again,  depends  on  yet  another  fact,  where 
commonly  the  defect  is  manifold  greater  than  it  is  in  the 


FAMILY    PRAYERS.  399 

points  already  referred  to.  It  is  not  only  necessary  to 
tlie  genuine  state  of  family  religion,  or  the  open  state  of 
godly  living  in  the  honse,  that  the  prayers  should  be 
prayers  and  not  observances,  and  that  both  the  parents 
should  be  truly  in  them  together,  and  the  children  care- 
fully bred  into  them  also  as  the  common  joy  of  their 
home ;  but  it  is  necessary  also  that  the  practical  ends, 
tastes,  plans,  aspirations,  and  works  of  the  house,  should 
all  come  into  the  same  circle  of  concert,  and  join  their 
petition  to  reinforce  the  suit  of  the  prayers.  And  here, 
as  I  have  already  intimated,  is  the  great  cause  of  failure 
in  family  religion.  It  is  not  difficult  to  get  a  Christian 
father  into  such  a  strain  of  desire  for  his  children,  that 
he  will  faithfully  maintain  the  prayers  of  the  house,  and 
press  himself  at  times  into  great  fervors  in  his  suit  for 
them.  These  fervors  will,  too  often,  be  kindled,  in  fact, 
by  the  conviction  of  really  great  derelictions  of  duty, 
such  as  come  between  the  family  and  all  God's  blessings 
upon  them.  No,  the  difficult  thing  here  is,  not  to  get 
even  the  fervors  of  prayer,  but  to  get  the  life  itself  and 
its  works  into  that  honest  and  deliberate  agreement 
with  the  prayers,  that  will  give  them  a  genuine  power 
and  meaning,  without  any  such  flights  and  passional 
vehemences.  The  difficulty  is  that  almost  nothing,  in 
the  arrangements,  tempers,  and  practical  ends  of  the 
house,  agrees  with  the  prayers.  The  father  prays  in 
the  morning  that  his  children  may  grow  up  in  the 
Lord,  and  calls  it  even  the  principal  good  of  their  life, 
that  they  are  to  be  Christians,  living  to  God  and  for  the 
world  to  come.     Then  he  goes  out  into  the  field,  or  the 


400  FAMILY    PRAYERS. 

shop,  or  the  house  of  trade,  and  delving  there,  all  day, 
in  his  gains,  keeps  praying  from  morning  to  night,  with- 
out knowing  it,  that  his  family  may  be  rich.  His  plans 
and  works,  faithfully  seconded  by  an  affectionate  wife, 
pull  exactly  contrary  to  the  pull  of  his  prayers,  and  to 
all  their  common  teaching  in  religion.  Their  tempers 
are  worldly,  and  make  a  worldly  atmosphere  in  the 
house.  Pride,  the  ambition  of  show  and  social  stand- 
ing, envy  to  what  is  above,  jealousy  of  what  is  below, 
follies  of  dress  and  fashion,  and  the  more  foolish  elation 
felt  when  a  son  is  praised,  or  a  daughter  admired  in  the 
matter  of  personal  appearance,  or  what  is  no  better,  a 
manifest  preparing  and  foretasting  of  this  folly,  when 
the  son,  or  daughter,  is  so  young  as  to  be  only  the  more 
certainly  poisoned  by  the  infection  of  it — 0  these  un- 
spoken, damning  prayers!  how  many  are  they,  and 
how  totally  do  they  fill  up  the  days  I  The  mornings 
open  with  a  reverent,  fervent-sounding  prayer  of  words, 
and  then  the  days  come  after  piling  up  petitions  of  ends, 
aims,  tempers,  passions,  and  works,  that  ask  for  any 
thing  and  every  thing,  but  what  accords  with  the 
genuine  rule  of  religion.  The  prayer  of  the  morning 
is  that  the  son,  the  daughter,  all  the  sons,  all  the 
daughters,  may  be  Christian ;  and  then  the  prayers  that 
follow  are  for  any  thing  but  that,  or  any  thing,  in  fact, 
most  contrary  to  that.  Is  it  any  wonder,  when  we 
consider  this  common  disagreement  between  the  pray- 
ers, even  the  fervent  prayers  of  the  family,  and  all  the- 
other  concerns,  enjoyments,  and  ends  of  the  common 
life  beside,  that  so  many  fine  shows  of  family  piety  are 


FAMILY    PRAYERS.  401 

yet  followed,  by  so  mucli  of  godless  and  even  repro- 
bate cbaracter,  in  the  children ! 

Here  then,  my  brethren,  is  the  great  lesson  of  family 
religion ;  it  is  that  religion,  being  the  supreme  end  and 
law  of  life,  is  to  have  every  thing  put  in  the  largest 
possible  harmony  with  it.  And  this  is  to  be  done  by 
no  superlative  fervors,  or  heats  of  piety  and  prayer, 
but  by  the  sober,  honest,  practical  arrangement  of  life 
and  its  plans.  Thus,  if  your  children  are  to  grow  up 
into  Christ,  that  is  to  be  made  their  prayer,  and  the 
prayer  of  both  the  parents,  and  the  prayer  of  all  the 
buildings,  migrations,  plans,  toils,  trades,  and  pleasures 
of  the  house.  All  these  are  to  pray,  in  sober  earnest, 
that  the  children,  as  the  practically  best  thing  possible, 
and  most  to  be  desired,  may  be  Christian  in  their  life. 
There  is  no  difficulty  in  forming  a  whole  family  to  God, 
when  there  is  grace  enough  in  the  parents  to  make 
that  really  the  object,  and  set  every  thing  in  the  largest 
harmony  with  it.  The  only  difficulty  is  in  doing  it, 
when  the  prayers  and  the  family  religion  are  one  side 
of  every  thing  else,  in  a  department  by  themselves,  and 
the  whole  body  of  life's  practical  works  and  ends  is 
operating  directly  against  the  result  desired  and  prayed 
for.  Prayer,  in  a  certain  proper  view  of  it,  is  only  one 
of  the  great  causes  of  the  world,  and  all  the  causes, 
natural  as  well  as  supernatural,  are,  in  a  certain  broad 
sense,  prayers.  What  is  wanted,  therefore,  is  to  put  all 
the  causes,  all  the  prayers,  into  a  common  strain  of  en- 
deavor, reaching  after  a  common  good,  In  God  and  his 
friendship.     The  relijpious  affinities  of  the  house  then 

34* 


402  FAMILY    PRAYERS. 

take  tlie  mold  of  the  prayers,  and  become  a  kind  of 
prayer  themselves.  The  children  grow  into  faith,  as  it 
were,  by  a  process  of  natural  induction — only  it  will  be 
intensely  supernatural,  because  their  faith  is  both  quick- 
ened and  grown  in  the  atmosphere  of  God's  own  Spirit, 
always  filling  the  house.  He  molds  the  prayers  to 
agreement  with  God's  will,  and  the  prayers  of  each  to 
the  prayers  of  all,  and  the  works  and  plans  and  tastes 
of  all  to  the  prayers;  and  then,  as  a  consequence, 
which  is  also  an  answer,  fills  the  house  with  his  in- 
grown sanctifying  power,  and  seals  the  members  with 
his  seal  of  life. 

Let  us  stop  here  now,  in  our  closing,  and  contem- 
plate the  dignity  and  power  of  a  genuine  family  relig- 
ion, thus  maintained.  Consistency  and  solid  reality, 
we  have  seen,  are  its  great  distinction — the  whole  order- 
ing of  the  house  is  worshipful,  and  faithfully  chimes 
with  the  prayers.  The  very  table  is  sanctified  with,  as 
well  as  by,  the  blessing  invoked  upon  it ;  so  that  when 
the  house  are  feeding  animal  enjoyments,  and,  so  far, 
saying  that  they  are  animals,  they  do  not  become  such. 
Their  sensuality  is  kept  under  by  a  divine  spirituality 
above  it.  It  is  not  so  much  their  bodies  as  their  souls 
that  are  fed.  By  their  holy  charities  and  prayers,  the 
family  property  is  also  sanctified,  and  all  the  industries 
by  which  it  is  obtained.  The  training  of  the  house 
does  not  end  in  money,  the  conversation  is  not  about 
money,  the  plans  are  not  plans  turning  on  the  supreme 
good  of  money,  the  only  losses  dreaded  or  shunned  are 


FAMILY    PRAYERS.  403 

not  losses  of  money.  Their  tb oughts  and  affections 
therefore,  mellowed  by  the  family  piety,  do  not  clink 
in  their  souls,  as  we  sometimes  almost  hear  them  with 
a  hard-money  sound.  For  the  love  of  God  penetrates 
and  savors,  all  through,  even  the  works  of  thrift  and 
all  the  ennobled  virtues  of  a  genuine  economy.  The 
mental  life  also  is  raised  by  the  family  religion,  for  they 
live  thoughtfully,  as  in  contact  with  God,  and  all  the 
highest  themes  of  existence.  Events,  providences,  nay 
even  things  themselves,  take  on  senses  related  to  intel- 
ligence, feeling,  and  the  uses  of  faith.  And  so  their 
very  talent  grows  into  volume,  because  it  is  never  im- 
prisoned, or  stunted  by  the  external  measures  of  things ; 
but  is  led  forth,  always,  into  what  things  signify,  as 
related  to  the  broader  affinities  and  the  half-poetic  life 
of  religion.  They  are  refined,  in  this  manner,  without 
any  ambition  to  copy  the  mannerisms  of  refinement  ; 
refined  by  the  fining  of  their  intelligence  and  feeling. 
They  are  not  emasculated  by  their  culture,  but  grow 
manlier  in  it ;  because  of  the  good  and  great  thoughts, 
and  high  subjects,  into  which  they  are  trained  by  the 
sober,  honest  piety  of  their  practice. 

The  family  is  thus  exalted,  every  way,  by  the  family 
religion ;  because  there  is  suck  reality  and  all-diffusive 
harmony  in  the  scope  of  it.  In  the  prayers  of  the  day 
it  recalls,  in  one  way  or  another  and  with  filial  reverence, 
the  ancestors  that  have  gone  before,  and  looks  hopefully 
on  to  the  great  reunion  of  the  future.  Its  births  are  so 
many  arrivals,  or  presentations,  at  the  gate  of  eternity ; 
its  baptisms  and  baptismal  namings  are  titles  recorded  in 


404  FAMILY    PRAYEES. 

the  family  register  of  God ;  its  deatlis  are  only  the  mi- 
grations of  so  many  into  life,  to  be  followed  by  the  mi- 
gration of  all;  and  the  sense  of  a  good  future,  to  be 
their  common  heritage,  imparts  a  trustful,  quietly  cheer- 
ful air  to  their  waiting.     For  that  bright  gathering  of 
the  house,  after  the  storms  are  over,  gilds  their  adversi- 
ties and  sicknesses,  and  kindles  a  beautiful  expectancy 
in  their  prayers — keeps  them  looking  up  and  away,  with- 
out any  instigations  of  asceticism,  or  false  antipathy  to 
the  world.     The  godly  father  dwells  in  such  a  house, 
even  as  the  apostle  pictures  Abraham,  dwelling  in  tab- 
ernacles with  Isaac  and  Jacob,  heirs  with  him  of  the 
same  promise  viz :  that  of  a  city  that  hath  foundations. 
Heirs  with  him — not  heirs  of  his  fee-simple,  not  legatees 
in  his  will,  waiting  patiently  or  impatiently  for  him  to 
die,  but  heirs  with  him  of  a  great  angelic  future  that 
rests  in  character  and  fruits  of  well  doing,  in  which 
they  bless,  and  by  mankind  as  well  as  God,  are  blessed. 
What  scene  of  family  dignity  is  more  to  be  admired  ? 
The  highest  splendors  of  wealth  and  show,  have  but  a 
feeble  glow-worm  look  in  the  comparison — a  pale,  faint 
glimmer  of  light,   a  phosphorescent  halo,  enveloping 
what  is  only  a  worm.     Even  the  poor  laboring  man, 
thanking  God,  at  his  table,  for  the  food  he  earned  by 
tUe  toil  of  yesterday,  singing  still,  each  morning,  in  his 
family  hymn,  of  the  glorious  rest  at  hand,  moving  on 
thitherward  with  his  children,  by  single  day's  journeys 
of  prayer  and  praise,  teaching  them,  even  as  the  eagles 
do  their  young,  to  spread  their  wings  with  him  and 
rise — this  man,  I  say,  is  the  prince  of  God  in  his  house, 


FAMILY    PRAYERS.  405 

and  the  poor  garb,  in  which  he  kneels,  outshines  the 
robes  of  palaces. 

The  beauty  of  such  family  scenes  has  not  escaped  the 
notice  of  poetry  itself,  or  even  of  mere  worldly  observa- 
tion. But  we  must  not,  for  a  moment,  forget  that  the 
charm  of  all  such  family  pictures  depends  on  that  sound 
reality  of  worship,  which  puts  every  thing  in  the  house 
in  keeping  with  the  prayers,  and  carries  back  the  mean- 
ing of  the  prayers  into  every  thing  in  the  house.  A 
flourish  of  prayer  in  the  morning,  followed  by  all  flour- 
ishings  of  vanity  and  prosperous  selfishness,  for  the 
rest  of  the  day,  will  not  answer.  We  look  in  upon  the 
Christian  family,  where  every  thing  is  on  a  footing  of 
religion,  and  we  see  them  around  their  own  quiet  hearth 
and  table,  away  from  the  great  public  world  and  its 
strifes,  with  a  priest  of  their  own  to  lead  them.  They 
are  knit  together  in  ties  of  love  that  make  them  one ; 
even  as  they  are  fed  and  clothed  out  of  the  same  fund, 
interested  in  the  same  possessions,  partakers  in  the  same 
successes  and  losses,  suffering  together  in  the  same  sor- 
rows, animated  each  by  hopes  that  respect  the  future 
benefit  of  all.  Into  such  a  circle  and  scene  it  is  that 
religion  comes,  each  day,  to  obtain  a  grace  of  well-do- 
ing for  the  day.  And  it  comes  not  by  itself,  as  in  the 
public  assembl}^,  not  in  a  manner  that  is  one  side  of  life 
and  its  common  affairs.  There  is  no  pretense,  no  show, 
no  toilet  practice  going  before,  no  reference  of  thought 
to  fashion,  or  dress,  or  appearance.  It  leads  in  the  day, 
as  the  dawn  leads  in  the  morning.  It  blends  a  heav- 
enly gratitude  with  the  joys  of  the  table ;  it  breathes  a 


406  FAMILY    PRAYERS 

cheerful  sense  of  God  into  all  tlie  works  and  tempers 
of  the  house ;  it  softens  the  pillow  for  rest  when  the  day 
is  done.  And  so  the  religion  of  the  house  is  life  itself, 
the  life  of  life ;  and  having  always  been  observed,  it 
becomes  an  integral  part  even  of  existence,  leaving  no 
feeling  that,  in  a  proper  family  it  could  ever  have  been 
otherwise.  A  family  state,  maintained  without  a  fire, 
would  not  seem  to  be  more  impossible  or  colder.  Home 
and  religion  are  kindred  words ;  names  both  of  love  and 
reverence ;  home,  because  it  is  the  seat  of  religion ;  re- 
ligion, because  it  is  the  sacred  element  of  home. 

This  training,  in  short,  of  a  genuine,  practically  all- 
embracing,  all-imbuing  family  religion,  makes  the  fami- 
lies so  many  little  churches,  only  they  are  as  much  bet- 
ter, in  many  points,  as  they  are  more  private,  closer  to 
the  life  of  infancy,  and  more  completely  blended  with 
the  common  affairs  of  life.  Here  it  is  that  chastity, 
modesty,  temperance,  industry,  truth — all  the  virtues 
that  give  beauty,  and  worth,  and  majesty,  to  character, 
get  their  root.  Here  it  is,  above  all,  that  they  who 
are  born  into  life,  are  led  up,  in  their  gracious  training,  to 
knit  the  green  tendrils  of  existence  to  God.  And  so,  in 
all  the  future  scenes  of  duty,  and  wrong,  and  grief 
through  which  they  are  to  pass,  it  will  be  found  that 
they  were  furnished  here,  with  supplies  of  grace,  and 
armed  with  shields  of  confidence  from  God,  to  meet 
every  encounter,  bear  every  burden,  and  maintain  every 
kind  of  well  doing,  till  the  victory  of  life  is  won. 

Holding,  now,  this  conviction,  as  Christian  parents, 
of  the  importance  of  a  true  family  religion,  allow  your- 


FAMILY    PRAYERS.  407 

selves  never  to  forget  tlic  condition  which  alone  makes 
it  of  so  great  value,  viz :  that  it  has  such  scope  as  to 
include  and  harmonize  all  the  ways,  and  works,  and 
cares  of  the  house.  See  that  you  plan  to  be,  in  your 
undertakings,  just  what  you  pray  to  be  in  your  prayers. 
Set  the  general  concert  of  your  affairs  in  God's  own 
order,  to  accomplish  only  what  is  agreeable  to  his  will, 
so  to  be  always  praying  with  you,  and  the  prophet's 
rich  valley,  teeming  with  all  fruits  of  abundance  and 
luxury,  will  but  feebly  represent  the  unfailing,  never 
blighted,  always  fruitful,  piety  of  your  children. 


DATE  DUE 

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Christian  nurture. 

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